


Recovery

by faeleverte, Kathar



Series: Two-Man Rule [9]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Back Together, M/M, Mission Fic, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, additional characters added in later chapters, minor mentions of memory modification, this one's for all the feels, where's Clint 2k14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-17 20:06:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 90,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2321675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just as Clint and Phil were recovering from their own private disaster, SHIELD collapsed leaving Phil, Skye, and their team alone to deal with the aftermath.</p><p>Well. There's also Ronin. He’s been the ace up Skye’s sleeve, and she’s playing him now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Just a three-story series, we said. One each of our own that we thought belonged together, and a third to wrap it up.
> 
> Nine stories and an entire season of riding as close to canon coattails as we can later, here’s Recovery at last, where we put Clint and Phil together the right way. Just in time to have Season 2 break everything, but hey. That one's not our fault.
> 
> For extreme betaing duty along the way, thanks to Beta J and [Selana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Selana/pseuds/Selana)\-- and especial thanks to Selana for superfast betaing in Recovery, while in the midst of all sorts of other ridiculousness.
> 
> We’ll post one to two chapters a day, ending no later than the afternoon before the Season 2 premiere.

**Skye**

She had promised Ward and Koenig that she could get them into an NSA satellite. 

It had sounded so simple when Skye said it. She’d meant it to sound simple, so neither of them would stop her-- after the whirlwind of events that had landed them in Providence base, she was in desperate need of something _concrete_ to do.

She slumped in front of her laptop, extremely glad that neither Agent Too Damn Pretty nor Agent Ewok were in the room with her.

“Please, _please_ , you have to work. You _have_ to work,” she muttered, even though pleading with her laptop had never worked before. There had to be a first time for everything, and she was due a break.

____

Ever since Agent Victoria Hand had hijacked the Bus and pulled it back into the Hub and hell, she’d had this sense of a world made entirely of eggshells crumbling under her feet as she stepped. 

Each hour, each minute since had gotten worse.

SHIELD as she’d known it no longer existed. The close-knit covert intelligence family she’d thought she’d joined had been, under the skin, HYDRA. And Captain America had walked into their headquarters and brought it down on everyone’s heads.

 _Out of the shadows, into the light,_ HYDRA’s message said, on all the SHIELD channels. Out of her history books, into her waking nightmares, more like. 

That was the first blow. Next, came the news that Agent John Garrett was the Clairvoyant. (Well, he was an asshole anyway, and she was pretty sure AC thought so too; he used his "at any moment I could snap your neck" smile around the guy. The really really sweet one.)

Half of the Hub’s personnel were traitors, secret members of a society out of the back pages of the comics version of history. 

The third blow was the news that the tattered remnants of SHIELD itself, finally catching their breath after battling their own turned friends, was being branded a terrorist organization by some Pentagon pointy-asses. AC had reacted to that about as well as she would have expected-- he’d taken the band on the run. Skye knew that Melinda May, at least, had deep worries about the sanity of his play. Sane or not, following a set of coordinates pointing to nowhere, on the supposition that their dead Director had planted them for him, was the act of a deeply worried man whose past, present, and future had just crumbled around him. 

Finding Providence in the snowy waste had seemed like an act of… oh, wait, yeah _real nice choice of a name, there, Director Fury. Bet you planned that one out._

Right now, there were only the seven of them against what seemed like a good portion of the world. And AC was all that was holding them together, as he muttered about threat assessments and status reports. It was a good look on the man.

\----

The laptop wasn’t cooperating; she was still getting big fat _incorrect password_ and _access denied_ and _forbidden_ messages blinking at her. 

It had seemed like a great idea at the time. 

Anything to speed up AC's search, anything to give them a purpose again. Anything to keep her busy enough not to think about the kiss with Ward at the Hub, right in the middle of his dashing heroics (say what you want about Ward, he looked so apologetically cute when being all superspy). 

Anything to help them all, her team, her family, all that remained of SHIELD. How weird was that, after she’d come on the Bus so reluctantly, still trailing her ties to the Rising Tide (and to Ronin)? And now, all she wanted was to not be left behind.

Metaphorically. Physically, of course, she was stuck here at Providence. Meanwhile Antoine Triplett, Jemma, and Fitz got to fly off to Portland with AC to do knight errantry or whatever passed for it in these dark times.

As for Skye’s own work, she only did what the rest of the team would have done if they could; even Trip, who quietly moved himself to AC's right side, a supportive shadow. (Had he done that for Garrett, too? How torn up was he feeling? Could he really be so resilient, or was he going to shatter too?) Of them all, she was the one who could make the data dance.

Or, that was the theory. 

Just a little NSA satellite. No biggie.

Just pull another little miracle out of your ass, Skye.

Well, she couldn’t do it. Not fast enough to help her team. She'd stood in front of her laptop for what seemed like hours, and she was making headway but she wasn't moving near fast enough, and she wouldn't-- not unless she had help.

She knew just where to find it, too.  
____

The first message from him came in just as they were fleeing the Hub in the wake of the fall of SHIELD:

_Are you safe-- can I help? Let me help._

She had looked around at the personnel scattering like ants fleeing a flattened mound, and found she had nothing to say in reply. All she’d texted back was “we’re alive and fine.” It was only partially a lie.

He’d sent more since; it didn’t matter which of their many old lines of communication she checked-- they were in the coding on the Craigslist ads, in numerals on the Rising Tide IRCs, hell, probably painted on a billboard somewhere, or even a rooftop. 

“I’m glad you’re imprinting on Himself,” he’d said in his last message, “but for Chrissake don’t pick up his bad habits, too. Ask for help, goddamn it.” And then, muttered nearly below her ability to hear, “that may be the most hypocritical thing I’ve said in my goddamn life.”

____

AC would have wanted her following up any line, right? Any whatsoever.

Even the line that he himself had severed when he’d sent Ronin out the door, then collapsed in on himself in the sterile air of his office, that night in Lima before she got shot and the world fell to pieces around them. 

Well. He’d never told her _she_ couldn’t stay in touch with Ronin. And she'd known Ronin back when she was still just part of the Rising Tide, long before she'd known Phil Coulson. Ronin had taken all the blame on his own head for the fact that she’d passed information on to him when she was first on the Bus. It had cost him his own relationship with AC.

As he left that night, quietly broken, he had curled her fingers around a silver card case. The little case concealed a two-way video camera which he’d implied he and AC had used to communicate. And it was just for her, now. _He_ was just for her. 

 

Now, she flipped open the little silver cam, thumbed the blue logo, felt it flash to life beneath her pulse point.

He answered just when she thought he wasn’t going to, just as she was taking a deep breath and steeling herself to leave a message. 

“Don’t hang up!” Ronin said, and she couldn’t see his face. He had the cam pointed at his shoulder, and it was kevlar or some equivalent, dusty black and mulberry, instead of his ninja gear. The SHIELD eagle emblazoned on it in black-on-black answered the question of his allegiance pretty clearly. Her emblem was on her badge, locked away in a safe; his was still on his chest. Also, he was sleeveless, and _man_ had she missed those shoulders, from the one time she’d seen them on the cam before.

“Okay?” she said, and abruptly the cam went blurry, then black, as he dropped it into… a pouch? or pocket? As it fell, she caught a flash of something vaguely green and leafy, and something vaguely metal and gunny.

A series of shots went off in the background, then a moderate explosion, some screaming, a few thumps, footsteps thudding against… planking? Maybe? Then silence for a moment, and shifting fabric, before the cam came out of the pocket and his shoulder came in view again. The armor was gone, in favor of a black sleeveless tac shirt and a hand twisting a makeshift bandage over a bicep.

“Talk to me,” he said. 

“Is this a bad time?” she responded. Because clearly whatever he was doing was… kind of intense.

“No. Fine time. Best time. All wrapped up here. I just have one last thing to clear up, then home and see if anything’s left. I have a bad feeling I'm gonna need to do some paperwork while I’m there and I hate that; I always get nervous and put the date in the signature line or sign someone else’s name.”

“I… okay?”

“You just call to chat, or you need something?” His voice was brusque, and for a moment she thought it was because he’d clearly just been in a fight. The crack at the end gave him away; that question had at least a dozen unspoken ones dangling off the end of it.

“Help. I need help.”

“Okay. Go there kind of help, or information kind of help? Now kind of help or ongoing kind of help?” This was _her_ Ronin, exhausted voice and different clothes aside. This was him as he’d been the first time she heard him in Lima, just before he jumped into action to save AC’s ass: so intense and yet so calm at the same time.

And: _go there_ kind of help? 

For a brief moment, she tried to imagine what AC would say if the ninja he'd driven away just showed up on their snowy doorstep; imagination failed her.

“Hacking kind of help,” she said, because that can of worms she’d open later. “Nowish, if you’re in a place--”

“I can be. Just let me find an intact computer.”

“-- okay. And ongoingish, too, maybe? If you--”

“Yes,” he said over the top of her. “Whatever you need. When I’m not…” the hand that had been worrying at his shoulder made a kind of waving gesture that she took to mean “singlehandedly taking out large numbers of enemies in exotic locales.” He laughed. “Hell, possibly even when I am, because hello.” A pause. “It’s good to hear your voice, Skye.”

“Yours too,” she said, because it really really was. He paused again, longer, and the cam shook a little. Was he going to just fucking ask already?

“So, what did you need?” he said, and she sighed inwardly. Of course he wasn’t going to ask about AC, not even now, because he’d promised he wouldn’t.

What the hell was _up_ with those two?

Later. She’d make time later.

“The Fridge has fallen. Himself is going after the escapees; I’m trying to hack into an NSA satellite so I can try and identify where some of ‘em are heading--” she said, and they were off and running.

And god, it was good, feeling her tendrils extend further as he fed her data, opened doors in the code to let light flood in, and she leaned into it. 

She basked in the flow, and let her shoulders relax just a tad.

\----

Hacking with Ronin was like a dance that she led and he followed, backstepping as he turned, feeding her data. She threw him code, he slid it into cracks in the websites with unerring accuracy. The first several minutes were too intense, too caught up in logistics, to talk, but eventually they settled a little. He'd propped himself against a wall somewhere and set a laptop on his actual lap. The little cam nestled against his hip, she imagined, because he'd turned it to face the laptop screen, as she had hers, so they could share data two ways. 

"So if I can get into this, I can sort the worst of the Fridge escapees more quickly. Prioritize the ones we can get to fast, the ones that'll be the worst. Maybe even figure out if any of them are useful to HYDRA." she said when they had space to talk. Her fingers flew over the keys.

"Thought you said Him... I thought your team was already after one of them? Who'd you have intel on that was that easy?"

"Guy named Marcus Daniels. Apparently he was stalking some chick in--"

"Portland." Ronin's long, knobby fingers paused in their typing. "Of course. Of motherfucking course Coulson went to Portland." He laughed, if you could call something that knife-edged a laugh. "Did he take anyone with him or just hare off like some kind of fucking knight in armor?"

"He took Fitz and Simmons and Trip-- you don't know Antoine Triplett." She bit down the urge to ask whether that was going to be enough backup, and the urge to ask whether the chick in Portland was fond of knights. It explained what AC had thought he was hiding, though.

"I do know Triplett, he’s John Garrett's partner. Nice enough guy, Trip, a bit of a troll. Too damn good for Garrett. Where the hell is that smiling bastard in all this? I hate to say this, but he could help." He said it easily, as if they hadn't only barely survived finding out that Garrett was a traitor. As if it hadn't broken Trip's heart and Ward's too.

"AC says he was the Clairvoyant. Agent Hand was taking him to the Fridge when it fell. Garrett killed her, before Ward killed him."

Silence on the line for a moment, a momentary stillness of the fingers before he went back to work.

"Holy fuck. Well, I won that bet." Ronin said after a long moment. 

"Which bet?"

"One I can't collect on anymore. But it was whether he was an asshat or just a boor. Phil... well, nevermind. Guy was always too friendly to Phil though, in that way that meant he thought Phil wasn't a tough enough agent. Anyone who couldn't realize that Phil's the biggest badass SHIELD has... had.... Anyway. I think we're nearly there?"

"Nearly nearly," Skye said back, although what she really wanted to say was "just ask me to tell him you won, you jerk. Just ask me to tell him _anything_. Just give us back our Ronin." But AC wouldn't want her saying anything about it, and Ronin was clearly done talking too. 

Still, if they hadn't been about to breach the walls of the NSA's cyber holy of holies, she wouldn't have given a fuck for what either of them wanted at that moment. _She_ wanted all her people around her. 

And then they were in, and swimming in data, and too busy to talk again, until suddenly the laptop, the silver cam, and Ronin himself precipitated themselves a foot into the air, and came down with a clatter. There was a fresh bullet hole in the planking beside the cam, where it had fallen. Planking creaked as he shifted weight, and an answering shot, then a moment of silence.

"Fuck," Ronin said. "Apparently shit's not as taken care of as I thought. I’m gonna be off the grid for a bit, Skye. Couple-few hours at least. I'll check back in when I get back. Don't, um, don't ice me out, okay?"

"Okay," she told him, but he was already gone, and the cam had snapped down into blackness.

She had what she needed, though, and it was time to go find Koenig, and Ward. 

Ah, Ward. Coffee. The kiss.

Shit, they had time now, while waiting for the team to come back. Time to deal with all of that and no excuses. She could have wished for more time; what ought to have been flattering just made her feel a little tired. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, and if he was as fond of her as he said he was? Well, he comforted her. He was warm, he was gorgeous, he was a friend, maybe he could be something safe to cling to as the world crumbled around them.

Well, then. She'd go lord it over Koenig (Ronin would have loved Koenig-- maybe she'd tell him about the guy later) and then she would decide what to do about Agent Grant Puppy Dog Eyes Ward and his kissing and coffee.

**Clint**

Clint had known something big was wrong ever since Director Fury had called him up. “Something big” didn’t _quite_ cover the situation as it actually stood, but then up until extremely recently, Clint hadn’t needed a vocabulary to describe finding out one’s entire intelligence agency was hiding a secret, largely evil, agency inside it, who was calling the tunes. Like a man in a dancing bear suit.

Still, Clint hadn’t known the scope at the time, because no-one did, but his hackles went up when Fury said he wanted to meet at a Dunkin' Donuts in Glen Burnie. _Baltimore_ , for chrissake. 

It was a spot equally inconvenient for them both, especially given weekday commuter traffic. Nearly the only good thing about the location in the mangy strip mall was that no-one gave a second glance to either the huge black SUV with the tinted windows, or the beaten-up motorcycle that Clint pulled up on. (Clint had used it as a battering ram. While it still _worked_ in the aftermath, Tony Stark had taken one long, rather anguished look at the dented, scratched, smoking thing, then shuddered and declared that it was all right, he didn’t need it back.) 

His suspicions had been confirmed pretty quickly when he walked up to Fury at the chipped and scored booth where he was sitting, nursing a cup of coffee and a custard bismarck. Fury looked up at him as he hovered, fighting the urge to clench his fist and brace himself (the donut, at least, didn't deserve squashing simply because Clint was anxious.) In Clint's experience, Fury only ever looked quite that truculent, when he was fairly sure the sharks were circling, but was blind in the water. It had happened maybe twice in the time Clint had known him. And one of those times had been just before the Tesseract opened.

Sure enough, Fury had waited until Clint was seated, then fixed him with his one-eyed stare, folded his hands, and started off with a warning. 

“Hello, Barton. First of all, neither of us were ever here.” Clint decided he was becoming steadily less enamored of this whole meeting, from the greasy doughnut to the uncomfortable seating, and it didn’t help when Fury continued. “If I send you off on something that might possibly be a fool’s errand, but might also be essential to SHIELD’s future, am I going to regret it?”

Clint had shifted, leaning forward and picking at the worn edges of his leather jacket, and thought about it, long and hard. 

Not two days earlier, Clint and Deputy Director Maria Hill had had a long talk about Clint's Future At SHIELD, in which he’d called the entire upper echelon manipulative bastards. Then, just to confuse everything, he'd declared undying loyalty to SHIELD in Phil's "memory"-- or something like that but much less eloquent. Hill had responded by reminding him he'd always worked well as a lone operative, which was more than a bit suggestive. 

It was… nice... to know that his instincts hadn’t been wrong-- she’d been vetting him for something out of the normal line. Something like Strike Team Delta might have done; something Natasha would be trusted with any day of the week-- frankly, probably was already doing. No one had trusted Clint with anything really _real_ since his fall. Now, after endless months of jerking him around, of interrogations and psych appointments and putting him _on_ active rotation and pulling him _off_ , of milk runs and exile in fucking Wichita and _let's talk about your future with SHIELD, Barton_ , Fury was asking if he was going to _regret_ sending Clint on an errand like that?

The stew of rotten responses that had sprung to Clint’s mind, as he stared down at his raised glazed, still set his gut churning all this time later. How close he’d come to flipping a double bird and walking out on Fury, just for the satisfaction of it. 

But it meant something to Clint, to try and salvage the relationship with SHIELD. Even though they’d been instrumental in the fucking up portion of the fuckup that was his ex-relationship with Phil. They hadn’t told Clint that his former SO, who also happened to be his lover, was alive again after being stabbed to death by the alien demi-God who’d put Clint under mind control. (And good _god_ \-- even for SHIELD that was a messed up state of affairs.) They-- Fury in particular-- had kept Phil from him, crossing the world on a fucking jet plane, never time to come home to Clint, to rest, to heal. Then again. Phil and Clint had proven many times that they could fuck things up without help. SHIELD had also been his home once, where good things had happened to him, and he’d seen enough good things die.

For all the good that Clint had been able to do, he might as well have walked out. 

Course, he hadn't known that _then_. Instead, he’d shrugged, and looked back up at Fury. Serious as a doctor’s bill, like always. That what's-beneath-my-feet carefulness Clint had already noted. But underneath-- and Clint wasn’t dumb, he knew Fury was _letting_ him see it-- there was something more than worry. There was a desperate cast to his face that woke up all the niggling wrongness Clint himself had been feeling since the Battle of New York. 

“Depends,” Clint said, and wondered how he’d swallowed chalk without knowing it, “on what I find, I guess. I won’t let you down, sir.” 

“You don’t, Clint,” Fury had said.

Clint should have known then that they were all screwed.

\----

It hadn’t been a fool’s errand. 

It _had_ been a very foolish oversight, on Clint's part, to route his way home through the small SHIELD base in the Ciudad Bolivar in Bogota, given that the information he had on him suggested that large sections of the South American branch were so rotten they'd crack in the least wind. He’d been hoping that they didn’t know yet that he knew. Fury needed that information immediately. Sooner, if possible-- and ideally months, hell, maybe _years_ ago.

At the time he’d made the decision to try and grab a quinjet, he'd prioritized speed over secrecy, but HYDRA was moving even faster. By the time he’d gotten into town, Fury had been ambushed on the streets of DC, Captain America and the Black Widow were fugitives, and all the SHIELD channels were hissing with HYDRA’s call to arms: _out of the shadows, into the light._ He’d been ambushed within the base itself and carted off to a satellite detention facility in the foothills. Briefly. 

He could hear Fury snorting at that. _Yeah, yeah, Fury, “trust no one.” Well, you’re dead, so how d’you like dem apples?_

Then again, it had been convenient to actually be onsite during the fall of SHIELD, given that nearly the entire base had been HYDRA (which was just Clint’s luck) and Clint, well-- that was just the kind of challenge that had always appealed to Clint.

The base in Bogota was on the outskirts of the Ciudad Bolivar, where the slums of the city very abruptly met the countryside. A sprawling compound half-dug into the foothills themselves, buildings linked together with planked catwalks above and below, Clint had kind of admired the base for the fifteen minutes he’d been there trying to arrange himself a flight, before a strike team “heading out for a mission” had made a quick detour to surround him on the tarmac and knock him out. It was just his bad luck. 

Just _their_ bad luck that the SHIELD agent they'd incapacitated was Hawkeye. And everything that happened after was really their own damn fault for not killing him when they had a chance. When Clint had woken up in a crumbling cell that smelled slightly of mildew, decaying vegetation, and sounded strongly of _rat_ , it’d taken him all of five minutes to pry a brick loose. The brick had met the head of the guard coming to collect him, which subsequently met the head of his guard partner, and then Clint was free.

_And they’d brought his bow along to the compound._

Well what did they _expect_ him to do with that, all on his lonesome in a little ramshackle prison with a mere handful of guards and one sweating interrogator?

Clint had just finished dealing with that problem when the _next_ set of HYDRA turncoats happened upon him, in the process of delivering a contingent of loyal SHIELD agents to lock into the cells built into the caves. And after HYDRA had delivered him a backup team so neatly, what the hell else was he supposed to do?

Clint had never thought his impressive study of how exactly to blow up SHIELD installations with a small group of armed insurgents would come in handy again.

Joke was on him.

Moving on.

That SHIELD was compromised, was falling, had fallen-- Clint hadn’t even begun to process it. He should be stricken, sick at heart, lost at sea. The shattered, bruised ex-agents that he snuck back onto the Bogota base, to bring down the home they’d known up until a few short hours ago, were all of those things. Young and old, dewy-bearded probie and grizzled Level Six alike, their world had turned upside down.

The Helicarriers falling from the sky, the death of Fury himself, the signs and symbols of SHIELD all trampled, burnt, blistered, on fire-- all these things reflected in their eyes when they looked at him, when they nodded grimly and went off and did the things he asked them to do. The things that could very well kill them.

They followed him with a desperate fervency, like he was the last vestige of sanity in their universe. Him-- the guy who was, up until now, responsible for the single most successful attack on a SHIELD facility ever.

All of them knew that they might be called on to die for SHIELD; that was expected in their world. Living beyond it was not.

As for Clint? 

It turned out that there had been some good in the shit he’d gone through since the Battle of New York, after all. He’d already mourned SHIELD, its loss to him. Mourned the death of the best Agent of SHIELD he’d ever known, the man his life had twined around for so long.

He hadn’t so much built Clint Barton up from the ashes as he’d rummaged in someone else’s past and pulled out Ronin, the masterless warrior. It wasn’t exactly a _subtle_ way of dealing. 

Then he'd found out Phil Coulson was alive, of course, because his life was written by someone with a very suspect sense of humor. And the journey back to Phil, their desperate attempts to cling to each other while their footing at SHIELD grew ever shakier, had ended in disaster. Out of the avalanche, Clint had saved only two things: himself, and his relationship with Skye. 

Which was why, when he’d first gotten himself free in the little prison in the hills, his very first act had been to try and contact her on the little silver cam Tony Stark had given him, what seemed like ages ago. Clint’d given it to her when Phil had thrown it back at him, that last bad time in his office on the Bus, just before Clint had walked out on him. Permanently. 

Or, well, so he’d said to Phil at the time. Truth was, and he’d admitted as much to the girl who’d gone from being his unwitting plant on the Bus to Phil’s confidant, that leaving was easier said than done.

He might be done with Phil, but he hadn’t stopped caring about the man's well-being. And he was definitely not done with Skye, which was why his second act after freeing himself had been to borrow a dead man’s cell phone. He posted messages on all of the different boards he could think of, where she might possibly turn. Skye was properly his to worry about. As for Phil, as little as the man might like it if he knew, a career’s worth of professional and personal concern wasn’t a habit that was going to be quickly broken. Only thrust to the back of his mind a little bit, while he and his little band of soon-to-be-homeless agents set the world on fire.

(His third act had been to call Kate Bishop and tell her to get his apartment building on fucking _lockdown_. And feed Lucky. _Then_ he got down to the business of kicking HYDRA ass.)

When Skye had _at last_ called him back, he’d been in the mop-up portions of the liberation of the Bogota base, hunting down the last of the fleeing HYDRA members. Cleansing the base of vermin, against all the odds. Inside, the loyal agents had been surveying the damage, trying to bring systems back online, find out what had happened to the outside world while they’d been fighting.

Skye’d called, he’d answered, even in the middle of a firefight, yelling at her not to hang up while he finished killing two escaping HYDRA members-- the bases's surgeon and the station chief, who hadn't realized that the janitor on Clint's team knew all about their secret escape tunnel. 

When he'd finished that, he'd sat right down, propping the Clint cam up against his lap. What she'd asked for was so easy, such a small thing to give her when he'd have learned to teleport just to be there to help, if she asked, that he didn't mention the blood or his wounded self. He just found a laptop and plopped down in a convenient grotto on the catwalk just outside the bunker as he helped her hack into a NSA satellite. 

She, in turn, told him stories about traitors and Clairvoyants and the fall of the Hub, and Phil's odyssey to a frozen base called Providence. And about Portland, just because the world had needed to teach Clint one more lesson today about how much he'd lost. Ronin, she called him, and Clint felt bitter with the irony, masterless now against his will.

He’d just about finished helping her when a HYDRA strike team that had been out on assignment came screaming in via quinjet-- to find their home in the possession of SHIELD loyalists. (That was the hardest part-- that the same places that had been home to Clint for so long had been home to HYDRA, too. Where _they_ worked and played and slept, loved and lost. That thought was worse than everything else put together.)

They’d had to blow up the Bogota base after all-- and then track down and take out the fleeing strike team.

By the time he was standing in the little park near the Bosque San Carlos, watching smoke curl up from a very new crater that was housing the remains of an apartment building, he was more than ready to go back to New York, to _his_ home.

If he still had it.

\----

Next time: they begin to pick up the pieces


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Skye reconnect, and Phil begins to feel the effects of his new title... and maybe something else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And off we go! Two chapters a night 'till the end. Most likely.

He wasn’t bleeding that badly after all. The first aid closet had been fully stocked in the not-too-distant past, and had proved more than adequate to his re-bandaging needs. The aspirin hadn’t even expired (quite). How convenient.

Clint would have to remember to tell Phil thanks for that.

Oh. Except he wasn’t talking to Phil anymore. 

Right.

Clint panted as he pulled himself fully upright from the slouch he’d fallen into on the floor of the little flat. He and Nat and Phil had set up this private safehouse up together, years ago when Nat had only been Agent Natasha Romanov of SHIELD for a few months; Phil'd used it to demonstrate in the most practical way possible that she belonged with them now. The "them," as always, had been left unspecified. It could have meant SHIELD, or it could have meant him and Clint. Either way, the gesture had meant as much to Clint as it did to Nat. She hugged Phil when she heard about it; Clint demonstrated his own gratitude while naked, in the pouring rain, in the middle of an operation in Mozambique. 

Buying the faded floral rug on the floor, the one Clint had just bled all over, had been Phil’s idea-- the peonies-and-poppies motif hid bloodstains surprisingly well. It was Nat who had insisted on the individual vacuum-sealed foil packets of instant coffee that filled a kitchen drawer, above the objections of the other two. Clint hated that he couldn’t tell her she was right.

Nat had been incommunicado since the day Captain America had fought his way out of the Triskelion, with only two exceptions. She’d sent messages twice by one of their private methods, just before and then just after she had helped Steve Rogers and Director Fury bring down the _entirety of SHIELD_. Along the way, she'd popped the less-classified half of Clint's file up on the internet, along with far, far more damaging records. Since it was done to stop HYDRA from taking over the world, he figured he couldn't complain. He hadn't gotten her warnings in time, for very good and valid-- and painful-- reasons. Clint wasn’t surprised she’d been involved in the whole collapse-of-SHIELD thing. 

Phil, buyer of the floral rug, was another matter. Clint hadn’t been in contact with Phil since Lima, when he’d walked out on the man, before Phil could yell at him to _get out_. Skye had kept him up to date, which was the only reason he wasn’t crawling the walls at the moment, desperate to run back to a man who so clearly didn’t want him. He was willing to admit that he deserved the anger in Phil’s voice that night. After all, he’d not only watched Phil via a spy cam, he’d also sent Skye into Phil’s path, knowing exactly what would happen-- what _had_ happened, that the two of them would end up imprinting on each other. He’d expected anger; what he’d gotten was so much worse. 

Bad enough to send him crawling into several cases’ worth of beer bottles, bad enough that he nearly ran away from the rest of his life, because that one corner of it had fallen apart on him. Bad enough that he’d finally realized just how deep his feelings ran. His timing had always been impeccable, and it’d really outdone itself that time. He was pretty sure he was done with a relationship with Phil, after all. Phil’s first act, after getting to safety during the exodus of the Hub-- had been to swan off to Portland to rescue sweet little Audrey, the woman he’d been…. involved with… just before the Battle of New York. (What? She really was little. And sweet. And elegant, and dewy and… he’d done his research, all right?) It didn't bode well, at any rate, as an indication that his feelings for Phil were returned. 

As for himself, well. He had no right to complain. Compared to what Nat and Rogers and Fury and Phil had done? A wee little smoking hole near the Bosque San Carlos, where he and his ragtag band of ex-SHIELD personnel had found their HYDRA ex-colleagues holed up was a mere nothing. What had happened to the facility in the Ciudad Bolivar was maybe a bit bigger, more on par with the intel they’d gotten from the Treehouse and the Hub, before losing connections. But there had been so few loyalists, and after shedding so much blood to take it back, be _damned_ if he could have gotten them to agree to turn it over to Colonel Talbot’s men. So if it had imploded maybe a little bit (a lot) while they were evacuating? Not Clint's fault. Cosmically speaking.

After leaving several significant sites in Bogota charred and smoking, he’d decided he’d done enough damage and decamped as fast as he could for home. If for nothing else, then to see if he still _had_ one. But even he could only travel so far before his exhaustion reached the ridiculous stage. Which was why he was currently slouched over a counter in a flat in Puerto Vallarta, with his reopened wound freshly bandaged, chewing on instant coffee.

And being miserably in love with a man who’d tried his absolute damnedest to make sure Clint never willingly spoke to him again.

At that point Clint got lost in his own thoughts, and only found his way out when a smear of blood against his hand told him his bandage was bleeding through.

Fuck. 

Clint tightened it, then stumbled over to the kitchenette to rip open another of the detested foil packets of coffee. He wasn’t sure he’d bother to mix it with water before ingesting it, either.

He didn't, then regretted the choice nearly immediately after, when he realized there was a buzz coming from the pocket of his pants. They were draped over the straight-backed chair next to him, drying out after the soaking he'd taken coming up through the sewers on his way into the city. Clint sighed, and moved to open a bottle of water while he fished the little silver card-case out of the pocket. He flipped it open without thinking, too busy washing the last of the coffee granules out of his mouth.

“Hello, Skye,” he said when he could talk again, and looked down at her face on the cam.

She was staring at him from underneath the folds of a blanket. Her dark hair was falling forward over her eyes and her lips were slightly parted, face blue with the light of… what? Oh, she was probably hiding the cam in the hinge of her laptop, like a novel within a textbook. The thought made him smile. She gulped.

“Your… face….” she said at last, and he raised one finger to trace the puffy lines of the bruises, now yellowing, along his eye and jaw.

“Yeah, it’s a mess, isn’t it?” he said.

“Its… you’re… I’ve just never seen you without the mask.” She was frowning now. Clint blinked as realization struck, then put his head on the counter.

“Yeah, well,” he said, voice muffled, “knowing what I look like is the least of your worries right now, and you, at least, I know aren’t HYDRA.”

“Sure about that?” she asked, and if he’d been more awake, he thought, he might have been able to read the odd tone of her voice.

“Implicitly.” If she was a sleeper agent, she was the sleepiest of them all. Practically comatose. And Phil trusted her. He could trust Phil’s trust where he couldn’t trust himself.

“Oh. Well. You, um, you know… you too.”

Clint was sure his shoulders heaved with the muffled snort of laughter he gave.

“Anyway,” she continued, “if you’d really wanted to take AC or any of us out, you’d have done it in Lima.”

Lima, again. Lima, where he’d been alone with Phil in the falling dark, the unconscious body of an androgyne Dutch mercenary the only witness they were ever together. Thankfully so, since he never wanted anyone to know how disgusted Phil had looked when he’d pushed Clint away from him. 

“Fair enough.” He hoped his voice wasn’t too broken. “And there isn’t much point in hiding from you anyway; SHIELD’s not around anymore to care who I am.”

“SHIELD’s still around, Ronin,” she breathed, and he looked up and caught her eyes in the cam, dark and swimming. There was an epic written on her face, and he struggled to read it. 

“What do you mean?"

“We won. We took down Garrett, and Cybertek industries, and probably most of the rest of Centipede, and AC’s Director now.” Clint felt his eyebrows fly up through his hairline.

“Oh is that all? And how the hell did Phil get to be Director of an agency that doesn’t exist? Did Director Fury come back from the dead and hand him the keys to a Helicarrier? No, Helicarrier wouldn’t do much good-- coordinates to a secret base?”

Skye’s silence was answer enough.

“Mother _fuck_ ” Clint swore. “Really, I should have expected that. You’re all intact?”

Her pause was far too long. It woke him right up from the haze he’d started to fall into despite himself.

“Skye? You’re all okay?”

“I… no. It’s… Look, I’m going to say this and then I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay?” She looked down, took a deep breath, then didn’t wait for him to respond. “It turns out Grant Ward was working for Garrett. The whole time.”

Clint squeezed his eyes shut momentarily, waiting for the uneasy swoop of his head and stomach to resolve themselves. 

“Oh, Skye,” he breathed. _Oh, Phil._

Her soft sad laugh startled him into opening his eyes. She was trying for wry, and coming off… exhausted. It was such a very Phil thing of her to do. He wanted to reach out and caress her eyebrow down.

 _You don’t want to end up like Phil or me, dearheart_.

“Ronin?” she said at last, and folded her arms underneath her chin like a teenager on a sleepover, “what happens now?”

“I have no idea, girly-girl,” he said, “but why don’t you tell me more about what you’ve been up to.”

He put the kettle on. Even he had better manners than to eat instant coffee with a spoon around company.

____

 

Phil peeled his undershirt over his head as he stood over the sink, staring at the scars on his chest that were thrown into bold relief by the hideous florescent lighting of his bathroom. He traced his fingers over the bold ridges, trying to figure out how he’d gotten from there to here. From certain death, his world and then his life ripped away by some alien freak with a magic mind-control staff and daddy issues the American Psychiatric Association en masse wouldn’t be able to sort out, to being tasked with recreating the one organization that was ready to stand in front of that sort of extraterrestrial threat. 

“That emergency was supposed to be the fall of an Avenger!” Phil had snapped at Fury on the Bus after taking down Garrett and Centipede, thinking of Clint, of Natasha, of Stark, how Project TAHITI has been created to put them back in the game should they fall, heal the worst injuries, bring them back from the brink of death or beyond. It was as much strategic move as a reward for selfless service to an Earth that didn’t understand the depth of their sacrifices. The wind had been sucked out of Phil’s sails, the anger melting away to leave only breathless shock behind, as Fury had leaned forward to answer Phil’s furious accusations.

“Exactly,” he’d said, and Phil could feel the weight of Fury’s stare from behind the black-tinted lenses of the sunglasses Fury was wearing. His words implied that he _had_ implemented the program at the fall of a hero. Someone Fury ranked among the greats. But it still made no _sense_. How could Fury count Phil among the likes of Captain America, Thor, and Hawkeye? Phil’s hand dropped away from his chest to clutch at the edge of the sink as he forced himself to steady his breathing. Hyperventilating in a tiny room with sharp edges and hard tile seemed like a bad way to start off his career as Director of SHIELD.

It was easier to focus on the events at the base in New Mexico, to study the way his tiny team had acted together-- a flawless whole-- to infiltrate the base. Skye’s intelligence had proven correct. The supersoldiers pulled back as they were switched to Default Directive, heading to Garrett’s side while Skye and May invaded the control room to threaten the whole project, leaving Phil free to go in on foot. With the wave of semi-robotic guides leading the way, it was easy to find Garret. And then Trip brought in the US Armed Forces when they were needed most. Fury showed up with the gun that could, if it hadn’t lost its charge, become Phil’s new favorite toy.

Some nights, the nightmare of being stabbed by Loki didn’t end with Phil writhing and crying out, tangled in his sheets. Some nights, Phil woke, warm and smiling, remembering the sight of Loki being blasted through the wall, the contented satisfaction of a job well done humming through his veins as his shattered heart quit trying to pump, as the arms of death reached out to welcome him with a promise of rest.

Phil jerked his fingers away from where they had resumed their minute tracing of the scars on his chest, shaking his head to clear away old dreams, old memories, old worries not worth thinking on anymore.

The only sour note in the buzz of victory that hummed under Phil’s skin was the uncertainty of Fitz’s future-- that he would likely never be the same was agonizing. His brilliant mind, the remarkable speed at which he processed information and created solutions, his bravery and his charm, and his offbeat humor… Phil dreaded the thought of Jemma without him. And with the damage coming at the hands of a former teammate, someone Fitz had considered a friend, had defended, even when there was no defense… It was almost impossible to absorb. For this, for leaving Jemma and Fitz to die, for forcing Fitz into sacrificing himself to save the life of his best friend, his other half… There would be no forgiveness. Ward’s future would be long, tedious, painful, and full of remembering and regretting. 

With a sigh, Phil turned on the tap and scooped a handful of water over his face, rubbing off the last traces of blood where he’d reopened the gash on his forehead. He was bruised all over, deep purple marks shifting down his side, disappearing into the waistband of his trousers. Phil slowly loosened his belt, unfastened his fly, and peeled himself out of his pants to examine the damage a bit more closely. Swollen tracks smudged both legs, and he was fairly certain that he’d successfully pulled every muscle in his body. He turned, twisting to see the mirror over his shoulder, eyeing his back. 

The Ranger tattoo from his early training was still visible through the injury to the back of his shoulder. Phil smiled at it, at the memory of how he’d somehow managed to rescue a team of eight Rangers from captivity by a now-defunct terror group. How they’d accepted this kid, a _very junior_ junior agent that Fury and SHIELD had sent to train with the Rangers. At first, they’d tried to make Junior Agent Coulson’s life a living hell. But Phil was used to living in Perdition, even then, and he hadn’t broken. After he’d proved his usefulness, after he’d proved that he had listened to them, learned what they taught him, they’d decided he was _One of Them_ and had dragged him off to get the proof of their acceptance inked into his shoulder. That had been one hell of a party.

Phil reached back to trail his fingers over it, and then moved his hand down to test the edges of his ribs, blackened from his free flight, courtesy the John Garrett Madness Express launch. Granted, walking up to the first recipient of Deathlok technology and trying to punch him in the face might not have been the best idea, but how was Phil to know Garrett had gotten an upgrade since their previous fight? Eh, he’d had worse injuries. Just a shame he hadn’t sent that letter to Clint yet. Shame Clint couldn’t have gotten it already and been there, waiting in Phil’s bed with the Tiger Balm. 

As much as he wanted Clint, wanted him _there_ , with Phill, with Phil’s team, with the rebuilding of SHIELD, there was no way to make it happen yet. Clint would be too big of a distraction, and Phil would let himself be distracted. But he would have something so much more _immediate_ to focus on, should Clint be standing there in front of him, curled into Phil’s bed, spread wide over Phil’s desk… 

No. He just _couldn’t_ send that letter right now, begging Clint’s forgiveness, promising his own love, begging for one more chance to prove to Clint just how desperately Phil needed him, needed them together. He couldn’t ask yet, not until Phil knew what the next step was, what direction he needed to go with SHIELD, what the next order of business was. The letter would have to wait. Clint would have to wait. _Phil_ would have to wait. And he really wished he didn’t have to.

Rubbing another handful of water over his face, Phil groaned and shoved his fingers through his hair, the water making it stand up, tufts sticking out at strange angles. As tired as he was, as sore as he was, the whole thing felt overwhelming. Surely a good night’s sleep was all he needed to get himself back together. Just six… eight… twelve hours of sleep. That’d do it. Surely that would help him figure out what the next step was.

“Goddamnit, Phil,” he told his reflection. “Why did you let Fury do this to you? What the _hell_ have I gotten myself into?”

____

 

“So I read a book once.” Skye said, almost idly, cuddling further into her sleeping bag.

“Once?” Ronin’s voice was warm over the line. His head had tilted, pillowed on his forearms, and his eyes crinkled at her.

“More than that, shut up.” The smile felt odd on her lips; when was the last time she’d smiled whole-heartedly? (When you got your brand-new agent badge, just before SHIELD disintegrated, her unhelpful mind supplied.) “Miles gave it to me. He said it was important political reading, which, whatever.”

“Miles is that jerk from Austin, right?”

“Right. Anyway. People in that book, they have these Attribute things, like, special powers, okay?” She was only half concentrating on what she was saying, and half on trying to become as comfortable as possible in a cramped bunk. 

“Mhm,” he said, chin disappearing further into his arms, and she wondered how much attention he was even paying at this point. They’d nearly talked themselves out by now, they must have. She’d walked him through everything that had happened since Agent Hand had dragged them back to the Hub, just in time for it to nearly fall as HYDRA agents began crawling out of the dark corners of SHIELD, like some wasp who’d paralyzed a caterpillar and laid its eggs inside. Walked him through the battle for the Hub, Garrett’s betrayal and capture, and the splitting of the team. True, she might have omitted a few details. A few… personal, kiss-related details. But it wasn’t relevant to the situation, and it still hurt her that she’d ever felt so grateful to Ward for his fondness that she’d actually _responded_ , that she’d ever spent any energy on figuring out how she felt about him.

Ronin had laughed at all the right bits, even her brief hallucinatory vision, when AC had implemented Odyssey Protocol, of the Bus tilting on its side as it went down in a whirlpool, of losing Grant Ward to a siren off some uncharted coast, of her washing up ten years later only to be greeted at a door by Ronin, just before he died of old age. 

That mental image, of a geriatric ninja sitting by a hearth, seemed so naive now, confronted as she was with the battered, bruised, scowling reality. Ronin seemed a million years old and stern as iron until he’d laugh, and then decades dropped off him. _How could I ever have imagined he was a geeky kid or a fat linux programmer? The man is pure panther._

And young. And kind of-- okay more than kind of-- hot. 

So, she’d filled him in on what she could, the final standoff with Garrett and Cybertek included, and Fury making AC Director then sending them all off to the Playground, to try and figure out what came next. Her throat hurt, Ronin was drooping, there was little more to be said that she was willing to say, and he didn’t seem to want to talk in detail about whatever she’d interrupted when she’d called him for help. 

Still, neither of them seemed inclined to sign off.

“In the book, when they use their Attributes, they take on their Aspect. They became gods, or at least, people think of them as gods, while they’re doing their thing.” She’d liked the analogy, okay? It had sunk in at a bone-deep level. Skye of the Rising Tide had set to finding her Attribute, to building an Aspect. She’d thought she’d done it well enough, been a little pocket goddess on the free web.

Then Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD had come along, and he’d blown her out of the water with a single smile. (And kidnapped her for interrogation on his jet-plane headquarters, which also made an impression.)

“Or like superheroes?” Ronin asked, breaking into her thoughts.

“Yeah, that, I guess.”

“I hate superheroes,” he said, and she laughed a little. This, from a guy who wore an actual friggin’ ninja outfit when jumping from balconies on his way to saving the day. “But what’s your point?”

“I dunno. I used to think this was my Attribute. Hacking, I mean.”

“And now you don’t?”

“AC thinks I have another one.” She tossed it off as nonchalantly as she could.

Ronin’s only answer was a grunt. His eyes were closed, had been closed for a while, and she wished they were open now so she could see them shifting.

“Maybe he’s wrong, I dunno. He says I can read people like he can.” 

“You can,” Ronin said after a long pause. “And you do remind me of him, you know. That way. It’s one of the things I liked about you back in the Tide days.” He opened his eyes briefly on the last sentence, and they pierced right through her.

Skye felt a blush creep down her neck, and wondered if it was visible on his side of the cam. She glanced down at her fingers.

“I… thank you. Just. Um, I don’t know, anyway: Himself. I’ve been watching him since, y’know. Since Garrett turned out to be the freakin’ Clairvoyant, and he had to rescue me from Ward, and Cybertek went all kablooie and, well… anyway. I just think it’s weird. That he reads everyone else so well, but he never notices his own. Aspect, I mean.” 

Dead silence from the other end of the line. She looked up, to find him looking down and away at… something. Where was he, anyway? Not at home, or he’d be more relaxed, not wherever he’d been when she’d last talked to him, or he’d be less. 

He was also exhausted. Why was she forcing him to listen to her babble about AC, when he’d flat-out told her he didn’t want her to talk about the man? Except that it had been impossible to update him on their actions _without_ talking about Phil Coulson, and whenever she mentioned his name, she’d watch Ronin go a tiny bit stiff. She’d never seen someone pull off _desperately nonchalant_ before.

Anyway, fuck him, _she_ wanted to talk about it. And he wasn’t stopping her.

“Thing is,” she said, when it became clear that Ronin wasn’t going to just _ask_ her what she thought AC’s Aspect was, “he creates _meaning_.” She’d seen him do it, dip his hands into the information flow in briefings like she did into the ‘net, order the world when he spoke. “I know, I know, it sounds all woo and New Age-y, but I don't know what else to call it. There we were, stuck in the middle of nowhere, snow up my boots, snow down my neck, absolutely exhausted. Convinced this was the end of the line, and there was _nothing._ And he went on this cheesy rant-- well, it should have been a cheesy rant. But, you felt _warm_ to hear it, you know? And he throws away his badge at the end of his fucking speech and gunfire comes out of nowhere, and that’s how we find Providence. An actual for real secret base in the wilderness. It’s not real. _He_ can’t be real. It’s like he was the guy delivering the epic speech just before humans blow the aliens away and save Earth, and he shouldn’t be able to make it work but he _did_ , you know?”

“I know.” Ronin’s admission came in a whisper.

“And he doesn’t get it at all, does he?” she asked, and watched him shake his head, rocking it against his elbows.

“No, no he really doesn’t,” he said sadly.

“It’s kind of endearing,” she continued, and he snorted. He couldn’t be so uncomfortable then that she should stop. Good. Because he needed to hear this bit. “I’m worried about him, though. Because it’s cracked, now, his Aspect. That’s what made me really notice it in the first place. I think it’s been cracking since before SHIELD fell. I think it got broken in Garrett's theta wave machine.”

She had to stop a moment and close her own eyes against the memory of Himself, bloodied and sobbing, as she pulled him out of that sci-fi freak show device. “He’ll kind of… flicker, dim a bit,” flat-out break apart, she didn’t add. (Or break Ronin.) “Then he’ll flash incandescent. I know… I know why, I mean, he told me… um.” She stopped herself just before she said _what happened with TAHITI_ because she wasn’t sure yet whether she could go that far. It was _her_ secret to tell, if she wanted, because the damned alien juice was in her body. But she couldn’t tell it without telling AC’s secret too. “He told me how it felt. On the machine. But,” and she shrugged, “I don’t know what to do about it.”

Then she made herself glance back at the screen, where Ronin had turned his face away, and she watched a single shudder go through him. _And if that doesn’t make you want to come find us,_ she thought to herself, trying not to pity him, _I don’t know what will_.  
_____

Skye must have nodded off at some point while talking to Ronin, because she swam back to consciousness to find her laptop had gone dark, as had the little silver cam folded in it. There was a soft snore was coming from somewhere near at hand. Skye reflexively shot a hand out to knock on the thin bulkhead next to her pillow-- Fitz had no idea just how loud he could be at times.

She paused when her knuckles hit the bulkhead, and blinked herself fully awake. She was back on the Bus, and everything was still. (And thank god it was-- she doubted she could have avoided nightmares if she had heard someone padding about. Already, her brief nap during the trip to the Playground had been invaded by dreams of meeting Ward by accident late at night, a shadow in the galley. In her dream, he pressed into her space, backing her against the microwave, whispering in the darkness that he'd come to wake shadows in her. Touching her-- no.)

No.

No Ward anymore, to be avoided or sought out. No low rumble and sway of jet engines as May and the autopilot shuttled them over oceans during the night. They were safe at the Playground, the second (of how many more?) secret base Nick Fury had set up and led them to. They'd met a second (of how many more?) Agent Koenig there, and he'd eventually distributed lanyards. Skye noticed that both she and AC had seemed to relax when they realized this iteration of Koenig did not run towards faux tropical scenes in his decorating scheme. She had enough nightmares already, and so did he. Instead, the Playground ran towards "know-your-exits warehouse," or so she assumed. It wasn't particularly roomy, but they were a small group and they rattled around in it like dried peas in a big can. They'd retreated to the Bus to sleep without bothering to talk it through. Even the Bus seemed just a little too empty, without Fitz in the bunk near hers.

So why was she hearing snoring? 

"Crap," Skye muttered to herself, and flailed upright, patting the covers around her until she fumbled her phone into her grip and turned it on. The blue light was weak, but enough to illuminate her tiny bunk. No one there; no snoring Fitz, no lurking Ward, no sharp-toothed clowns. And the snoring had stopped.

"In my dream, it was in my dream." She removed the cam from her laptop, preparing to shift the devices so that she could lie down more comfortably. As she raised the cam, the snoring started again. 

The cam hadn't powered off or gone to sleep after all, and it wasn't all black. There was a large form taking up most of the viewing screen, but in the corner she could see hints of a darkened room beyond. Cracks in the closed louvres threw pale light in the very back of the picture.

Ronin had fallen asleep too, talking to her, and it was his shoulder or head she must be seeing up far too close.

"Aw, Ronin," she found herself sighing, as she rested her fingertips on the top of the cam. "Your neck is going to ache in the morning." Unless it was already morning there. Or a stormy afternoon-- it was impossible to tell. Something was welling up in her throat as she watched him and, without her volition, her fingers dropped from the cam.

He was at the end of his rope, of course. Even in what she could remember of their conversation, the tiredness had seeped from his every gesture and word. It was bone-deep, like hers, and probably only half physical. Betrayal was exhausting. And he didn't have a team-- or the remnants of a team-- around him to cushion him against the full force of the loneliness that came with the renewed realization that there _was_ no larger SHIELD, only them.

Elsewhere on the Bus, May was sleeping the sleep of the redeemed badass. Simmons, Skye'd put to bed herself, tucking the covers around her chin, reassuring her that Fitz would recover, he _would._ They'd talk more later, hold each other and joke weakly and sob a little. She didn't think either of them were capable of surviving it yet. Trip was sleeping a few bunks down from her in what had been Ward's bunk. He was rapidly making it his own, but the thought of someone rustling around in that space still made Skye a little queasy, somehow.

No one really wanted to be in the mostly-empty dormitories in the Playground as yet. Too much air.

AC was holed up in his quarters at the top of the plane, where he was always alone-- as alone as he could be in such a small space. Surely he didn't suffer the kind of irrational loneliness that was flooding her now. She looked back down at the cam, let her finger drift over Ronin's exhausted, snoring blob. If only....

SHIELD was gone, after all. Everything had fallen and burnt. Surely whatever wall he and AC had put up between themselves, surely it was time it fell too? He should come to them. 

Meanwhile, she was so very tired still.

It could wait until morning. Unless it was already morning. Then it could wait until she woke up.

Skye set the cam, still open, alongside her pillow. She cuddled down, and drifted back asleep to the sound of quiet snoring.

____

 

Phil sat up stiffly, reaching up to scrub a hand over his face. He pulled his fingers away slowly, rubbing them together and frowning at...

_Grit. Why’s my face gritty?_

Forcing his eyes open, Phil frowned at the dust all over his hands, his shirt, his sleep pants, sticking to the soles of his bare feet. He blinked rapidly, starting to look around, trying to figure out where he was. With a grunt, he rolled to his feet, alarmed and more than a bit frightened.

 _What the_ Hell _am I doing here?_

“Here” was a storage room in the bowels of the Playground. He’d been down there the day before, unloading extra equipment from the Bus, securing the more interesting artifacts the team had collected. For some reason, Phil had slept in a heap of dust in the corner furthest from the door. His pajamas were covered in a fine dust, and his scalp itched, indicating that he was, quite literally, covered from head to toe. He sighed heavily, turning to look at the place his body had been resting.

And froze.

The entire back wall was covered, ceiling to floor, in the harsh lines and geometric shapes of the writing that Ward had found in the Belarus, the gouges scratched in the ripped-off door of the Bus’s lab. The lines were carved deep, and there was so much of it that it should have taken someone a week to do. But it hadn’t been a week. Couldn’t have taken a week. The team had only been at the Playground for one night. And there was no one else nearby. So… Phil had created all of this in a single night. While he was asleep. Or out of his head.

Phil sank to the ground, wrapping his arms around his knees, hugging them to his chest. He fitfully brushed his hands over the dust on his pants, flicked at the shoulders of his shirt-- _Clint’s_ shirt. Trying to remove the evidence from his own eyes. Get the dust off, hide it, don’t let it sully the… _Stop._ His clothing would have to be washed. Soon. Now. Immediately, before anyone found out.

May _should_ be told, though. It was her job to know, assigned by Fury himself. She had been tasked with watching for any weird kinks in Phil’s brain. She _had_ to be told. But… Not now. Not yet. If she decided that Phil’s mental state was at risk, if she found him unfit, tried to remove him from duty, who would be left to guide SHIELD back to level ground? Who was left to take on HYDRA? Who else did Fury trust? 

_You can count them on one hand._ Phil had answered when Fury asked that same question.

 _And I’m not afraid to cut off fingers._ Fury’s face had darkened as he’d given his usual reply. Phil knew that Fury had, more than once, carved a piece of his own heart out, discarding someone that had once been vital but could no longer be counted on to do what was Right. To keep Fury’s secrets. To protect SHIELD and the world. The symbolic excision of something considered diseased, useless, dead.

Besides, Phil was Director now, and he could always change her orders.

Eyes running over the wall, tracing along lines and diamonds, the weirdly hypnotic flow of… whatever that was… Phil was relieved to note that he didn’t understand it. He wouldn’t hazard a guess as to whether it was words in some monstrous language or some kind of alien mathematics. For all Phil could tell, he’d just copied out the menu for his favorite carryout joint back home… back in New York. That place with the falafel that made Clint swoon.

Phil gripped the sleeve-hems of the shirt where they were slightly too snug on his biceps, hugging himself into the softness of the much-worn fabric, shivering and wishing it was Clint’s arms and not just his shirt cradling Phil, stroking soothingly across his skin. If he were here, Clint’s sharp eyes would find the meaning behind the writing on the wall. They could find the source of Phil’s insanity, let Phil dig it out of himself, turn him back into plain old Coulson, the man he’d been before a scepter ripped his heart in two twice, first by taking Clint away and then by shredding through Phil’s body. Maybe Clint would stand watch over Phil, an arrow ready to make a sharp, smooth end, when Phil turned into Garrett, sanity bleeding away into spit-showering rantings and an overblown sense of purpose. 

_Is this why I begged for death? Is this why I demanded they not bring me back? Did I know I would go insane? Lying on the table, did I remember what had happened to the others who were given the serum?_

Others… Oh. Oh shit. Skye.

The same alien ichor derivative was running through her veins. The stuff that had healed Phil (and apparently other test subjects) that was driving him mad (had driven every other recipient to madness) had been injected into her to save her life, to heal the gunshots to her stomach. She deserved to know that Phil was losing his mind. She should see the wall, see what was happening. Because what if she began doing it, too? What if she started to slide the way Phil was beginning to? What if…

No. Not yet. Phil needed more time to watch, to study, to analyze. Too many questions without answers, and he couldn’t bring the others in until he had a plan in place. And there was always the chance, slim though it might be, that he could solve this one on his own. Or, if not solve it, contain it, keep himself in check. Keep watch over Skye and prevent her from going down the same path. Maybe, with a little luck and Fury’s tiny black box, Phil would be able to find the other doctors who had been present for Project T.A.H.I.T.I. and he could discover why this was happening now. With that information, he might never need to tell the team at all.

His toes left tiny circles in the drifts of grit on the floor as he shoved himself to his feet. First, Phil had to hide this, cover it, keep it safe. Keep his team safe from it. Keep his team safe from whatever he was becoming. This was not the time to give anyone reason to doubt his judgement, his sanity. They had to be able to believe the things he said, the orders he gave. They had to be able to trust him implicitly. Especially right now, with the mantle of the Directorship resting heavy on his shoulders.

He cleared a nearby shelf, setting tools and cases and boxes marked “Miscellany” in neat stacks on the floor, before dragging it to cover the wall in front of the lines, reaching out once or twice to trace something with a careful fingertip. He shivered every time he did, something just out of reach eating into him, burrowing beneath his skin. Something at once familiar and foreign, painful, frightening and… exciting. Don’t think, don’t touch, just _hide_ it.

Backup. Phil needed backup. Someone he could trust, someone that would always have his six. And that meant Clint. Phil didn’t have to be infallible for Clint to trust him; Clint knew his weaknesses better than anyone and _still_ he’d gone along on all their missions and crazy adventures. Clint knew how to take Phil out of his head, turn off his worries, his fears, his failures. He’d proven it that night after the guns and the rain and the blood, after the terror and loss and heartache. He’d demonstrated that skill countless times since. 

With another heavy sigh, Phil knew he was making excuses, no matter how valid the reasons sounded, for doing what he wanted to do anyway. Instead of getting easier, though, every day was getting to be harder to face without Clint. All Phil needed was one chance to explain, to apologize, to tell Clint just how much he was needed, wanted, loved.

Step one, hide the carving. Step two, get the team settled and decide which of the myriad tasks SHIELD should tackle first. Step three, contact Clint. Phone him; mail the letter; hell, fly the entire Bus to New York and rappel from the cargo ramp to the roof of Clint’s building: whatever it took. But not yet. Phil would do it soon; there were other priorities to be sorted and solved first. He _would_ go, though. Or maybe call. He’d mail the letter, at the very least. 

And then what? _If_ Clint answered the letter, answered Phil’s call, what would Phil do then? Beg for forgiveness? That was a given. Beg to be taken back? Held, kissed and fucked back into sanity? 

_But… what if he really doesn’t want me anymore? After what I did, what I_ said _. How I…_

Phil shifted a few more objects on the shelf, stepping back to make sure the shadows disguised his handiwork. It didn’t matter if Clint didn’t want him now. What mattered was that Phil was going to try; he was willing to fight for what he wanted. He would try to explain and then plead for forgiveness. Give himself one more shot at having what he needed. He just hoped that one middle-aged, balding, slightly broken and a little bit mad SHIELD Director was enough to offer in return.

The last box was arranged with artistic casualness on the shelf, adjusted until the shadows hid as much as the metal frame, as much as the items themselves did. Taking a step back to study the effect, Phil nodded to himself and tried to shake off his unease. He’d called a general briefing following breakfast, and he knew he would have to hurry to get to his office before someone saw him. He needed a shower, a fresh suit, and at least a rudimentary plan to present to his team. Time to forget the writing on the wall-- at least for a little while.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulson's Agents and Hawkeye's Frenemies

“Morning, AC.” Skye looked up from her laptop as Phil entered the mess. He managed to give her a vague sort of nod in reply and zeroed in on the coffeepot. 

Even freshly showered and dressed in a crisply clean suit, Phil still found himself wanting to scratch at his scalp, check his lapels for more dust. He resisted and sank down into a seat at an empty table in the corner of the mess to finish the notes he was making for the morning’s briefing. May came in, smiling, calm, clearly feeling more herself with a SHIELD victory under her belt and a new set of orders, closely followed by Koenig, who didn’t seem to have both eyes open yet. Trip gallantly led Jemma through the door, but she ducked away from him quickly to take a seat beside Skye. They exchanged a look: Jemma brave; Skye understanding.

Letting the morning conversation drift over him, soothing as a white noise machine to someone who’d spent years starting the day in SHIELD canteens all over the globe, Phil got on with jotting down ideas and plans for his new organization. He tried to keep it reasonably limited, knowing that he was surrounded by the best (most of the best), and that they would have ideas of their own. He nodded with satisfaction, emptying his mug before rising and gesturing for the team to collect at a central table.

Phil refilled his mug as he walked over to join them, feeling his shoulders straighten as he realized that the anticipatory looks they all wore were aimed at “Director Coulson.” Even thinking the title sent a little shiver, half of fear and half of excitement, racing through Phil’s body. He took a scalding gulp from his mug, ignoring the burn through years of practice. Or, well, years of having burned off all the nerve endings in his mouth and throat, doing the exact same thing with each and every cup of caffeinated life-juice.

_What’s the definition of insanity again?_ Phil thought, and then winced. _Probably has something to do with carving up walls in one’s sleep. Shit._

He shook off the morning and smiled as he laid his legal pad and pen on the table, unbuttoned his jacket and sank into his chair.

“Good morning, Agents.” He wished Clint was there to hear this. No, scratch that. Clint would have started humming the theme to Charlie’s Angels. He’d possibly pose. At the least, he’d be doing his level best to make sure Phil was too distracted to be professional, cracking jokes only he phound phunny. Phil held his cup to his lips, let his eyes close as if savoring the caffeine, and imagined that Clint was there at the table. Would he have that glow of pride that he wore each time Phil had advanced a level? That internal light only eclipsed by the charge when his own level rose each time, so shortly after? Would he be glaring at Phil, still angry, still hurt. Or would he be giving Phil that ironic half-smile that so clearly said “You poor bastard. Look what you’ve gotten yourself into this time.”

A real swallow of coffee got Phil’s brain back on track.

“I suppose that, now that I’m officially the boss, you’re all expecting some kind of sweeping changes. I don’t actually expect to change that much about the way we, this team, that is, operate.”

Trip gave him his slow, easy grin, mischief sparkling in his eyes and the blinding flash of his teeth. “I am sorta hoping you at least don’t plan to let the skull-and-tentacle crowd back in.” 

Phil couldn’t hold in the snort of laughter that bubbled up, and his shoulders relaxed as it escaped. 

“I don’t know.” May leaned her elbows on the table. “We might need the target practice.”

Koenig tapped nervously on the handle of his mug for a moment before looking up with a scowl. “They wouldn’t get lanyards.”

There was silence around the table as everyone blinked at him, uncertain how to answer. He broke the tension with a cheerful laugh, eerily reminiscent of his brother.

“I’m just joshing with you! Seriously, you all need to lighten up.”

“As I was saying…” Phil tried to glare around the table, but everyone was smiling, their triumph over Centipede still showing through. Except Jemma. Her lips were curved, but the line of worry was still between her brows. Phil met her eyes, letting her read his sympathy, understanding, and worry, before he continued. “When I say ‘we,” I mean this team. We’re still in this together. And together is how we’ll continue to operate. As of right now, we’re still just a band of…” 

_Vigilantes_ , Fitz had said, with far too much enthusiasm. Phil couldn’t bring himself to say it. The table looked so incomplete without Fitz there at Simmons’ side. 

“So our first priority,” Phil continued, “is the organization of the… org..ani...zation.” He shook his head to clear it. Apparently sleep-writing was not as restful as Phil had been hoping. He slid out of his chair for just one more refill of coffee. 

Jemma lifted her hand slightly. “Sir, I don’t mean to criticize you, but what about Assistant Director Hill? Why wasn’t she promoted? I don’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t have been; You’re going to be fantastic director! But she was second in command and… You’re… you… She…” 

Phil took pity on her as she started to flounder, cheeks flushing scarlet. 

“Former AD Hill has her own fight in this war.” He sank back into his chair, setting his mug precisely in front of him and folding his hands on the edge of the table. “She’s still dealing with Capitol Hill. Hopefully, she’ll be able to get our designation as a terrorist organization rescinded. I suspect that the events in New Mexico will help us with that, as _we_ were the ones who took out Centipede and Garrett. Especially given what happened during the military brass tour. Garrett going insane and killing one of them will give her some good ammunition, at least.”

He took another swallow of coffee and one more for good measure, forcing the afterimages of Garrett’s wild eyes and flying spittle out of his mind. It was all too easy to superimpose his own face, _Skye’s_ face onto that maddness. All too easy to understand the fear that he’d heard in his voice on the video where he’d resigned from T.A.H.I.T.I and begged that the procedure never be used on another.

He shook it off when May chimed in over his continued silence.

“Maria Hill is exactly where we need her to be right now.” May leaned back in her chair, and gestured vaguely with one hand. “She’s protected by Stark’s army of lawyers and Pepper Potts herself, and she’s in position to fight the arduous legal battles for us.”

“So what’s first, AC?” Skye grinned at him around the screen of her laptop, clearly teasing him with the nickname; obviously, she wasn’t letting go of it just yet. Phil smiled back, warmed to his toes that she cared enough about it-- about _him_ \-- to keep using the name she had given him during a quiet moment of shared confidences. 

The obvious answer to her question was “everything,” and Phil bit his tongue to hold the word in. “Everything” wasn’t possible-- not just yet. Especially as Phil had planning to do-- his _team_ had planning to do-- if SHIELD was to keep from growing into the unwieldy behemoth it had become. To keep it from becoming so morally ambiguous that HYDRA could make plans for the destruction of all SHIELD held dear not only under their noses, but with the full support of the organization as a whole. Phil would rather watch it burn.

“We need resources,” Phil began. “Information. Support. Agents and associates we can trust.” He looked around the table. “You all have people you trust out there. People you would call, would count on if we weren’t here. We need to feel those people out. While we’re doing that, we also need to begin a search for any loyal agents who want to come in from the cold.”

“How much from SHIELD’s old servers can we access here?” Skye closed her laptop and rested her cheek on her fist, elbow on the table. “I mean, I know I can dig through what was dumped online. But is there anything else left?”

Phil looked to Koenig, who shrugged. 

“There’s still a lot that’s encrypted on the drives here at the Playground. If you can figure out how to get into it, it’s all yours.”

“Billy,” Trip turned to him. “While they’re working over your computer, how about you and I start inventory. We need to know what we have, what we have to get, and what we’ll just have to make do without.”

May drummed her fingers on the table. “I still have some connections with associates in other alphabet departments that I can lean on for information.” 

“Good.” Phil nodded at her, jotting another note on his legal pad. “There are people who will still trust _you_ even if they no longer trust SHIELD. You might want to make contact with your mother and see which of her contacts are available to us.”

“Sir?” Jemma’s voice was tentative. “Sir, what about the researchers? What about our medical and scientific personnel? We’re going to need tech, medical treatment for injuries sustained on missions…”

“Begin a list of those you trust.” Phil scribbled several more bullet-points on his notes. “We’ll do our best to track them down and vet them. I’m not sure what facilities we have at our disposal yet, but we’ll try to make contact. I want to make sure they’re safe. We can possibly syphon off some of them into Stark Industries, with Hill’s help, of course. And there are some universities and research labs that have provided assistance to SHIELD in the past that will probably jump at the chance to collect some of our STEM technicians.”

“What about the Fridge escapees?” Trip asked. 

“They are our top priority.” Phil grimaced. “Another top priority. Skye, are you still running that tracking program you set up at Providence?”

“It’s running itself,” she corrected smoothly. “But yes; it’s still going.”

“If you get a solid hit, let me know. We’ll hopefully be able to tell if it’s something we can take care of on our own, or if we need to pass it on to the regular authorities. Of course, for most of the inmates of the Fridge, the regular authorities can’t do much about them.”

“Anyone in particular you’re looking for?” May gave him a knowing look.

“Waarzegster.” 

“That was the… person from Peru, right?” Jemma asked. “The Fortune Teller? Why do we need to find him… her… Them?”

“Zeg deals in information. Has since their merc days, decades ago.” Phil gulped the last of the coffee. “And the fall of SHIELD combined with the rise of HYDRA is going to be headlining on the covert organization news outlets right now. So, if we want to hear what’s going on, we go to Zeg. We need intelligence badly enough to pay for it, if we have to. If we’re really lucky, Skye will find something on the servers that we can use to barter with, since funds are a bit low at the moment.”

“You saying we’re going to have to get day jobs, boss?” Trip tipped his chair back, laughing.

“I don’t know that we’ve fallen that far _quite_ yet,” Phil answered, gathering up his papers to close the briefing. “But you might want to start brushing up your resume so you’re not the one stuck flipping burgers when this all goes to hell on us.”

“No, sir.” Trip’s eyes were serious above his bright smile. “Fury trusted that you won’t let that happen to us. And I still trust him.”

“Thank you, Agent Triplett.” Phil nodded firmly at him.

“And if we’re done with caring and sharing,” May interrupted with a bored drawl to hide her amusement, “we all have work to be getting on with.”

Everyone laughed as they pushed back from the table to finish getting ready for the day or to begin their tasks, while Phil rose and walked to the coffeepot for one more refill.

“Too much of that is going to make you jittery, Phil.” May leaned her hip against the counter and stared pointedly at his mug.

“Too little is going to make me cranky, Melinda.” He deliberately took a too-hot swallow and smiled blandly over the rim at her. He could feel her staring at the back of his head as he turned to collect his notepad from the table, noticing Skye lacked her usual speed as she collected her computer.

____

 

Skye stayed back, slowly packing up her tablet, until the others had left the briefing room. May was last, not _obviously_ reluctant, because May was never obviously anything. But she lingered, somehow, until AC raised an eyebrow at her.

The look she gave Skye on her way out was eloquent, but in a language Skye didn’t know.

So, okay, Skye wasn’t fooling anyone, the important part was she had Himself alone, and he was leaning back against the side of a table and crossing his arms, smiling a Mona Lisa smile at her. She found herself ducking her head and smiling back for a half second, mostly out of the relief she felt in seeing him like that.

“I’m happy to loiter,” he said eventually, “but perhaps you had something else in mind?”

Skye mirrored his stance against the table opposite him, trying to force the tension out of her shoulders.

“So, if it’s information you want, I have sources,” she began, and got a little nod in return. “I mean, not just sources, I… when I needed to hack that satellite, while you were off in Portland doing… what you were doing… it wasn’t going fast enough. I needed help. And I couldn’t turn to anyone in SHIELD, seeing as it had all gone poof, so….”

She trailed off, waiting to see if he’d pick it up. His face had gone quite blank, all of a sudden, although he was still managing to be pleasant. _I should really just let you hang, see if you decide I mean the Tide first, or Ronin._

But she didn’t have all day, and neither did any of them.

“So I called Ronin,” she said, opting for the plain facts version.

“Oh,” he said.

“Is that a problem?” _Just let it sit, Skye. Don’t qualify it. Let him dangle._

“What? No. That’s not… why would that be a problem?”

_You tell me, boss_. 

“I wasn’t sure, after Lima, if you trusted him.” That her voice hadn’t so much as hemidemisemiwavered pleased her inordinately. She wasn’t going to get anywhere, with either of them, if she hesitated now. His wince, quickly concealed by a jerk of his head, told her she’d landed a solid hit.

“No, I trust him. Implicitly.” Had his voice cracked? What the hell? Was he _shifting on his feet?_ When had that man developed tells? If Skye’d needed a reason to keep pushing, he was giving her a half dozen. Whatever the hell had happened between them, it had driven AC to actual twitchiness. They _had_ to resolve it-- the last thing they needed was a skittish Director.

“Good.” Deep breath here. “Because I talked to him last night, too.” 

Coulson’s head _whipped_ back to her, and Skye bit down the instinct to crow happily.

“Did you? How was-- what did--” he dropped his head. “Did he give you anything useful?”

“He says not to worry about the base in Bogota,” she said, taking pity on him. “It ‘won’t be a factor anymore.’ He looked dead on his feet, but he was safe, anyway. On his way home.”

“Good,” AC said after a moment, closing his eyes. “Good. That’ll be…”

“First time I’d seen his face,” she mused when it became clear he wasn’t going to finish the sentence. 

“Oh?”

“Yeah; hard to believe a guy that beaten up could be that hot.”

AC snorted. 

“That’s C-- Ronin all over.” He didn’t appear to exactly be paying attention to her; his gaze had wandered off to somewhere in the middle distance. Skye was glad, because that meant he missed her double-take. That… wasn’t exactly the reaction she’d expected. (Or was it? Was this the reaction everyone had to Ronin? _It would explain a lot_. Maybe Coulson’d seen it often enough that he’d just come to expect it; that at some point on an op, Ronin would get himself fawned over. She wasn’t sure who she pitied more in that case-- Ronin for attracting the attention, or his superior officer for having to plan around it.)

“Boss?” she asked, softly, and was startled by the speed at which his eyes locked on hers. “I could really use some help from someone who hasn’t been alone in a secret base for months? And he told me he’d known Waarzegster, so he’s the first guy I’d want to go to, to find them.”

“Yes, no… go ahead, keep talking to him,” AC said after a moment, swallowing hard. “As often as you like. I’d… I’m glad he has you. He’ll be… he’ll be very useful. Ronin always had good connections; ones we never could tap otherwise.” What was in that, that made him sound so bitter?

“Yeah, but… May and Trip could use help, too, you know. Um. In the field, I mean, not in inventory. Someone else to help on kickass duty.” _Um_. He looked skittery as a jackrabbit, and this was not a way Himself was supposed to look. Ever. “Look, boss, I don’t know what happened. But we’re kind of all out on our own here, and he’s not… I can’t imagine he wouldn’t come help if we asked him to. So if you can stand to be in the same room with him at _all_ , I would like to go get him, _please_. You’re the one who said let’s go after the agents we think might be willing to join us.”

“No.” The shake of AC’s head was jerky, fast, vehement. 

“Why _not_? If you’re worried you’re going to fight again--”

“That’s not it. Not on my side. It’s not… the time’s not right.”

“What’s not _right_ about it?”

“We’ve got a lot of agents in jeopardy, Skye, and a lot of bad guys to hunt down. Ronin can, he always could, take care of himself. He’s safe, you said, he’s headed home, and he deserves to get a little downtime with his dog and Ka-- his… his _ward_. Keep in touch with him, please, and thank you. I don’t want him getting lost. But, I’m not… _we’re_ not… ready to get him yet. _Soon._ Trust me.” He punctuated the promise with a firm nod in her direction, and Skye had a momentary sense of relief, before he started to wilt in front of her. “If he’ll let me, even,” he continued, in that tucked-away voice she hated. “It’s a better bet he’ll come for you than me.”

“But, boss--” Skye said, and broke off, because how do you end that? _I’ve heard his voice, he’d follow you anywhere_? No way was AC going to believe her, not in this mood. “Fine,” she finished. “For now. But tell me when you’re ready.”

_Unless Ronin takes the decision out of your hands first._

____

He did not flee to his office after the exchange with Skye. Phil was just in a hurry to check some paperwork that he thought was still in his files. He needed to check his desk for… Fine. So he’d fled. It had been so hard to hold in the words that wanted to force their way through his teeth.

“I’m not ready to bring him in yet, because I’m too afraid of what’ll happen if I say ‘forgive me’ and he says ‘no.’ If I say ‘love’ and he says nothing. I can’t have the distraction of him in front of me until I know which direction I’m going, because he is Polar North to all of my attention. I am afraid that if I don’t go to him _first_ , he’ll be compromising and nothing will change, and then I’ll just break it again.”

Words he couldn’t say, thoughts and feelings and fears that Skye didn’t know-- _couldn’t_ know. 

Phil drew a legal pad out of his desk and started sketching in notes, distracting himself from the unsettled tug of longing that hearing Skye talking about Clint had stirred. Just get through the planning stages, and then the letter would be sent, and after that…

Well, really, after that… 

The pen stopped scratching out the list as Phil lost himself, daydreaming about purple ribbons and future uses for them.

____

 

"I swear to God, Nat, that's the hottest you've ever been, and I'm including both Budapest and Quito in that statement. You ever want to seduce a mark again, just use your Senate testifying voice on him. Oh, fuck you, too." Clint switched the phone to his other ear, so he could scribble _you have to prop the flipper open before you can relight the pilot light, or it snaps on you_ on the list he was leaving for Kate.

He folded it in half and stuffed it in an envelope, the edges crinkling before he got the whole thing in. Natasha's voice was warm even over the somewhat fuzzy connection-- wherever she was got shitty cell reception, evidently. Didn't matter, just hearing her voice was enough.

"I'm sorry, Clint, it seems like I'm always leaving you alone these days," she said, and Clint nodded his agreement, pausing a while before remembering she couldn't see that.

"It's not you, it's HYDRA," he said, and reached over to zip up his duffel. "You're doing what you need to do." He took one last look around the apartment and sighed. He and Kate had left a couple take-out boxes lying around on the coffee table; he picked them up gingerly by their tabs and took them to the trash.

"That's what we both always say, but I'm still leaving you behind," Nat said, and Clint snorted.

"Maybe I'm leaving you, ever think of that?" he snapped back, trying to keep his voice light, and it startled a snort out of her.

"You'll never leave me," she said.

"No," he couldn't have kept the fondness out of his voice if he'd wanted. "Stop worrying about me, Nat."

"But how would I fill all the free time if I did that?"

"I dunno, macrame? Seriously, you need to concentrate on lying low right now, or finding yourself or whatever. I'll be around when you need me." The door opened as he spoke, and he was attacked by a rampaging mass of fur. The phone went flying.

Kate picked it up and handed it back to him with a smile, as Clint extricated himself from a pile of Pizza Dog. He winked at her. 

"Kate and Luck are back. I gotta go; you stay safe."

"I'm supposed to be telling you that," Natasha said.

"That's a waste, when have I ever taken that advice?"

"Fine, but if you get yourself hurt, I'm going to find you and kill you," she told him.

It took another exchange or two of goodbyes and good lucks before either of them were willing to hang up, but eventually Kate's eyerolls got to be too much, and Clint forced himself to end the call.

"I left you a note," he said, and gestured to the rumpled envelope sitting on the breakfast bar. Kate looked from it, to him, and back.

" _Really_ wish you'd stay longer, Hawkeye," she told him, ignoring it completely.

"I wrote down the steps to relighting the pilot on the boiler, because it's kinda weird, and you've gotta kind of wedge this little door open, or else it won't work--"

"Which you probably put in the letter, right? Clint," Kate said, and drew him into a hug. Clint felt himself freeze when her arms went around him; he lowered his own to her shoulders as gently as if he'd break her. She was whip-strong, lean, bendy as a longbow under his hands. "We'll be fine. All of us. Even if you stay longer."

"No," he said, kissing her forehead, and feeling a little awkward about it. "Much safer with me gone right now. Keep everyone safe for me, okay, Hawkeye?"

"Yeah, yeah. And Clint? Tell Ronin I expect a visit from _him_ , too, before too long." 

He smiled and closed the door on her and on his Pizza Dog, before he could regret it. Kate was always gracious at the most unexpected moments; like the one where he hadn't even bothered to call her, after that first frenzied order to lockdown the apartment, to tell her what was going on. He had sent a text, saying _am fine, need a favor, one of Stark's lawyers is going to email you do what they say_. 

On his way down the stairs, his phone buzzed. He fished it out and answered it without thinking. Tony Stark's voice bubbled out of it into his ear.

"So I know you're on your way out but hear me out, here," Stark said, and Clint heard clanking in the background. He sat down on the landing with a sigh. If this kept going, he was going to miss his flight. And possibly _not_ miss any HYDRA agents or Tracksuits that might be looking for him. That would be... inconvenient.

"I'm still not coming to work for you, and I'm still not going to hole up in the Tower, Tony," Clint said.

"Oh come on, where are you going to find a better offer? Seriously, Clint, you're worrying me. Depending on who's winning down in DC on any given day, you're a terrorist. Not a safe place to be."

"Not the first time I've been there, Tony. I get it, I really do. You didn't know what was going down with SHIELD until too late, and now you're trying to compensate. Man have I been there. But I'm not ready to come be collected just yet, all so you can feel better. Okay? Are you going to tell me anything new, or are we going to have the argument we just had, again?"

"The argument we just had. We'll probably keep having it, too, until you give in."

"Is this how you and Pepper work?"

"Kinda. Sorta. Except she wins. Some of the time, anyway. Most of it. Like, 88% of the time. We could use you, help Hill and Pep and me with the whole private global security thing we're doing, right?"

"Maybe later. I'll keep the option open. Look, I get it, and I appreciate you making space for me--"

" _Making space?_ You think this is charity, Legolas?"

"-- but I, like most of the rest of us, have a _lot_ of loose ends to take care of right now. Thanks for your help with the lawyers and stuff."

"Oh, yeah, anything to help. You don't need that hanging over your head right now. Not sure Kate Bishop'll ever forgive me, though."

"Nah, she's always like that when she's trying to act all adult. She'll be fine," Clint stood while he was talking and began to move off down the stairs towards the front door. It was way past time to be going; the hairs on the back of his neck were already starting to prickle. With both hands occupied, he couldn't smooth them down. "Look, I'll keep in touch," he said, and shut the phone down as he opened the door.

Right into the face of Basil, who was standing just outside the door wearing his nattiest tracksuit, his elaborate moustache bristling faintly in the morning breeze.

"Bro!" said Basil, and Clint felt himself droop at all members for just a moment. "Long time no see, bro!"

"Not that long, Basil. Not nearly long enough. Look, if you're here to bug me about the building, you're too late--" 

"Bro, seriously, you got me wro--"

"-- because it's not mine anymore."

Basil's eyes went wide as doggie bowls, and his jowls drooped a little. It was nearly enough to pull a smile from Clint, even given the circumstances behind the whole affair. Truth was, he kinda liked Basil. The man might be a goon for a Russian mob boss, but he had a sense of perspective about it that was refreshing.

"Seriously, bro? What you mean? Who'd buy piece of shit building like this, bro?"

"Her," Clint said, and jerked a thumb behind him. With her usual exquisite timing, he felt Kate appear in the doorway behind him. He saw her reflected on the window of the late model Civic parked on the curb, ripply, leaning against the door to the building, her eyes two black holes behind her sunglasses.

Basil turned his eyes on her and gaped.

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," Kate smirked at him, and crossed her arms as Clint looked back at her. Damn, but she was amazing-- cool and astringent as tap water, and when she turned his direction the smirk grew a little more genuine. However worried-- and pissed, don't forget pissed-- she'd been when he'd shown up late the night before, battered and exhausted, to tell her she was buying the building from him ("Because HYDRA, Katie-Kate, no arguing. Can you think of anyone else who could keep it safe and off the radar of the bad guys?"), she'd put up a brave front in front of their Tracksuit Mafia emissary here. 

"So bug her about the building," Clint said, and tossed his duffel and bow case onto the racks of the motorcycle parked just behind the Civic. 

"Bro, but... that's not what...bro seriously...." Basil seemed to be having trouble finding his voice. Or pulling his gaze from Kate.

"See you, Hawkeye," he tossed at her with a two-finger salute, which she returned.

"Likewise, Hawkeye," she said, and if she _was_ still mad at him, or tearing, or just tired, the sunglasses hid it all.

"But--" Basil spun to stare at him. "Is for real? No one yanking Boss's chain? You Hawkeye, bro? Like, the Avenger? Seriously, bro?" He looked _hard_ at Clint's arms for a second, and Clint rolled his eyes.

"The fact that he kept threatening you guys with a bow wasn't a giveaway?" Kate asked, and Basil shrugged.

"You not believe the shit I see in this hood, bro. Seriously."

"Yeah, I'm Hawkeye," Clint said shortly. 

"You were SHIELD, huh, Bro? Bad thing, what happened in DC. Not good, bro, all those octopus men you let in." Basil shook his head, and his moustache bristled in a show of dismay.

"We did not either let them in. Intentionally. And that's why I'm out of here," Clint told him, because it wasn't like he wouldn't figure it out. "But don't get any fancy fucking ideas; Katie-Kate and her army of lawyers here will keep you in line if you try. And Ronin and a few friends'll still be around."

Basil nodded, firmly.

"But you gotta take care of business, eh, bro? Chop up some Nazi octopus bros?" He seemed strangely satisfied by the prospect. Clint stopped, arrested in the task of strapping down his bags, and gave Basil his full attention. In the doorway, Kate pulled down her sunglasses, and Basil, watching her, blushed. 

"Like you or your boss would mind if HYDRA found this place," Clint said, "it'd make life easier for your boss, huh?"

"No, bro! No! What you take me for, bro, seriously? Not gonna be friends with any Nazi jerkwad psychos like that, bro. Not Basil." He gestured wildly at Kate, as if begging him to believe her.

"Okay, not you, Basil. Your boss?" Clint asked. Basil shook his head, moustache drooping.

"Not likely, bro," he said, then looked back at Clint, and up at Kate. "Is safe, if HYDRA comes looking, leaving building in her hands?"

"Safer than mine," Clint said, and climbed onto his bike. "Katie-Kate's something else." He nodded at her once more, deliberately ignoring the way her face went soft, and kicked the motorcycle to life. 

He left them both watching him as he slipped into the early afternoon traffic, already thickening towards the molasses of rush hour.

Clint tried not to look back; he couldn't afford the sentiment at the moment.

____

 

“Ah, you found us, then.” 

Clint bit back a laugh as the slender figure turned towards him, ringed hands templed together beneath the sleeves of a too-long sweater of faded black. 

“It wasn’t particularly hard, ‘Zeg, you always did have habits.” His voice came out more gentle than he’d expected. Time and the Fridge had made Waarzegster even paler and scrawnier than Clint remembered from their bad old days. The baggy fit of the sweater and the skinny jeans didn’t help, nor the way ‘Zeg’s stick-like hand played with a wedge of a knit scarf of the approximate subtlety of a Miami beach club sign-- all orange, red, and chartreuse, striped liberally with openwork. Once upon a time ago, Clint had known ‘Zeg well enough to read the frailty underneath the bold wrapper. 

He’d also known Waarzegster, then a mercenary, intimately enough to know exactly how tough and sly ‘Zeg was, even at vulnerable moments. ‘Zeg had been taken to the Fridge, after all, in the aftermath of a horribly bungled operation in Lima earlier in the year. Phil Coulson’s team had gone in after what they’d thought was a male and female set of fortune tellers that they’d linked back to the Clairvoyant.

Except that both fortune tellers were just the one ‘Zeg, using a preferred cover for the information-swapping business they really ran. Moreover, ‘Zeg had their usual compliment of paid goons in the offing, and Melinda May and Grant Ward had been separated from their boss in the rolling scuffle through the Mercado Central and disappeared in a flurry of second-hand panties from an overturned shop. 

Clint-- who wasn’t even fucking supposed to be there, but who was the only one who realized they’d poked a stick at a hornet’s nest-- had gotten to Phil just in time. Just in time, that was, to hear ‘Zeg threaten to kill Phil-- and then _insult his suit_. At which point Clint had dropped down on ‘Zeg and knocked ‘em out-- but since Clint had been dressed as Ronin at the time, in his black and gold ninja outfit, he doubted ‘Zeg knew it was him.

It didn’t stop him from feeling weirdly apologetic now that he saw ‘Zeg in the flesh again. Sure, they had tried to kill Phil, and the memory still lit rage in Clint’s belly, but Clint hadn’t really needed to _literally_ step on ‘Zeg when ‘Zeg was down-- he had just been a little messed up at that point. And sending someone to the Fridge for defending their own turf just sat ill with him. Perhaps that bled out as affection in his voice; ‘Zeg gave him an ironic smile.

“Can you blame us? Look across the canal. What more spectacular view can you hope to see than this? Spires and minarets, and the Christiansborg Slot, how they do _dominate_ the skyline.”

“Your kind of view entirely, ‘Zeg. Although…” Clint gestured back at the little street that wound behind them, away from the plaza. “You only come to Copenhagen when you’re in a bad way, but hanging around in Fortunstraede? Even for you, that’s a little… blunt, don’t you think?”

“Do not tease us, Clint Barton, and be nice to us. It could always be worse. We could have chosen Rotterdam. You remember Rotterdam.”

“I tried my best not to. Walk with me, ‘Zeg?” Clint gestured down the plaza, where a steady flow of pedestrians was filtering in and out of doors in the late afternoon sunlight. The open air was refreshing, and the setting made it harder for any newly-acquired goons to follow them.

“The Coyote Club is down just a few doors, Hawkeye,” ‘Zeg murmured, and slid a hand around his elbow. (Their other hands were both conveniently out of sight, and Clint was sure ‘Zeg’s was as near to a weapon as his was.) “And it has been too long since we danced together. Let us do our business there.”

Ah, the Coyote Club. Strobe lights and dancers on the bars and way too much ambient noise, even before you counted the music. Clint had used to love the way the bass rumbled all the way into his bones, and it was, in many ways, ‘Zeg’s natural habitat. About half of Clint’s bad ideas had been committed to in clubs like that. 

That had been long before SHIELD-- long before Phil. The thought of going back to it now just tired him.

“I like the fresh air at the moment, ‘Zeg, and I don’t believe you want to be confined right now, anyway.”

“Ah, hm, perhaps you do not remember correctly, conf _ine_ ment was always welcome with us.”

“No, I mean, since you escaped from the ‘Fridge with the other prisoners SHIELD had kept there.” Clint turned to look ‘Zeg right in the eye-- as best he could through ‘Zeg’s overgrown shock of hair. 

“And you call us the blunt one? SHIELD changed you, Agent Barton; it made you very dull. We do not wish to be reminded of that time.” ‘Zeg removed their hand and crossed their arms defiantly. “Very well, if this is what you prefer; what are you here for? SHIELD no longer exists, your masters are gone, your Director is dead, and all you were was a husk of an organization serving HYDRA, all along. What can you possibly want?”

“Revenge?” Clint tried to make it as light as he could, tried to make it seem like underneath he truly meant it, like the thought didn’t just make him melancholy. Like he wasn’t just going to turn right around and tell Skye everything next time he saw her over the ‘Cam. ‘Zeg turned to stare at him, and Clint returned it with what he hoped was a small smile.

“Who are you trying to avenge and what could you possibly hope to accomplish? Hawkeye, there is always a place for your bow, always sellers who wish to buy your eyesight, and will pay with a fairer coin than SHIELD ever did. Come back with us, let us find you a good contract.”

Clint ducked his head, let his shoulders speak for him-- and wondered if ‘Zeg was trying, in a weird fashion, to be kind, or if ‘Zeg was working up to suggesting they contract for Clint’s services themselves.

“Maybe later, ‘Zeg. Right now… I want to know everything you know. About SHIELD, about its fall, and about a thing called Project Centipede.” It wouldn’t be safe, much as he would have liked to, to ask ‘Zeg directly about any of the raft of SHIELD agents still missing, but this much he could look for, could pass on to Skye.

Could use, he hoped, to help Phil in the uphill battle to find something to replace ‘Zeg’s reading of a future without SHIELD.

“But why would we want to help you avenge SHIELD? Who hid us away without trial or recourse? Jail in Peru we could have withstood, Hawkeye. It would not be the first time. But scarcely were we in our humble cell when two agents, they come to the door. They present papers, and off we are taken, into SHIELD custody, off to the ‘Fridge. Along the way, a man with a face like a dark sad eagle, he questions us, but we think he thought he already knew the answers.”

Sad eagle? Who the hell? 

“Felix Blake?” Clint asked, suddenly getting it, in part from Skye’s debrief, late the night he’d collapsed in the Puerto Vallarta safehouse. Blake had been hunting down the Clairvoyant, and he’d been suspicious of Phil-- of course he’d have found out about Lima.

“Him, yes. We hear that he was shot in the scuffle with the man they call Deathlok.”

“He was, he’ll live. Or so I hear. How did you know that? Who got you out?”

“An Agent Garrett, his tall dark shadow Agent Ward,” ‘Zeg’s smile was dark, “they led the escape. I wonder, did Agent Phillip Coulson ever find out that he was harboring a serpent in his bosom?”

“Oh, trust me, you don’t want to be Agent Ward right now,” Clint told him-- especially not if Clint ever got his hands on Ward. 

Skye had finally told him about Ward seducing her, killing the Agent who staffed Providence, and kidnapping her. It had made sense of the several messages from her he’d found on his laptop when he’d finally finished dealing with the situation in Bogota. One that said “ping!,” another that said “urgent! need help!”, and a third that said “nevermind-- took care of it.” By which, apparently, she’d meant that having not found Clint online, she’d fed Ward’s identity into a crime alert database herself and had him picked up. (It hadn’t really taken care of the situation, he’d been horrified to find out-- she’d ended up captive on her own Bus, then rescued by Phil, then plummeting towards the earth in Lola, but those were all just _details_.)

Clint was _well_ aware that the line to deal permanently with Grant Ward, when time permitted, went through Melinda May and Phil, but he was prepared to fight either of them for it. Well-- unless Skye took care of the situation on her own.

Skye was prone to taking care of situations on her own; it reminded her of his Katie-Kate. Clint swallowed down bile at that. Kate was also given to hiding her personal heartaches from Clint, and that burned. ‘Cause neither of them had any qualms about getting involved in _his_ business. The relative anonymity his Ronin identity provided was probably the only thing preventing Skye from being a busybody about him and Phil. 

Meanwhile, ‘Zeg was apparently very pleased at the effect Ward’s name was having on Clint.

“We wanted to thank them, but they ran too fast. Though we never expected them to be HYDRA, we confess. A failure on our part, but then, much larger organizations than we failed as well.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t guess; Garrett was the Clairvoyant, after all,” Clint snapped. ‘Zeg’s eyes went wide.

“Ah, now, we owe you one for that, Hawkeye. That we did not know.”

“Makes a difference, does it?” 

“To one of our clients, yes, it does. If we can find her again.” ‘Zeg looked back up at him. “If you have information on her, I will owe you considerably, and we will talk.”

“I’d have to know who you mean, first.”

“The woman in the flower dress, who worked with Project Centipede,” ‘Zeg said, and leaned back on a bike rack. Clint blinked, then his face cleared a little. Raina. Skye had mentioned her, too, briefly. She’d been in the room when Skye found Phil in that damned machine Garrett had used to try and extract his memories-- she had, in fact, been the one who had convinced Phil to climb into the damned thing in the first place.

“She was being held in the ‘Fridge with you,” Clint told him. “Taken before you were, in fact, while going after Phil Coulson. Sound familiar?”

“Unfortunately so. It explains why we have not been contacted by her recently. Well, she would have gone with the Clairvoyant; she had a question still to ask him.”

“She did go with Garrett, but escaped when he got taken down at Cybertek.”

“Taken down? That is another one we owe you, Hawkeye. It is sad to be so ignorant as we are right now. Did she ever get to ask him? About her concern with monsters and the darkness inside?”

Monsters. What-- no, Clint remembered now. Part of that horrible conversation about Ward, again. Skye telling him Ward called her a monster, then threatened to….

Well, Skye had beaten him, anyway. Had reacted exactly how Clint could have hoped she would. _Girly-girl is starting to know her own strength finally_.

“She and Ian Quinn escaped with a whole lot of scientific equipment, I don’t think she ever did find her answer, ‘Zeg,” Clint told him. “But if you find her…” he stopped himself. Suggesting ‘Zeg violate what they perceived to be client confidentiality never went well. He couldn’t imagine ‘Zeg would have admitted anything to him, if they hadn’t thought Raina had stopped using them.

“You cannot possibly have an interest in her now,” ‘Zeg said, eyeing him carefully. “She is not to be part of your vengeance. She is useful to us, if we can find her.”

“I had no plans dealing with her,” Clint told him-- mostly truthfully. Not her in _specific_ , anyway. She was Phil’s to deal with. Ian Quinn, now. Well. He’d shot Skye. He was another one that Phil, May, and Clint might find themselves flipping a coin over. “I’m interested in HYDRA, in SHIELD agents that got left out in the cold.”

“Enemies and friends. In that order? Then we may go on. We will put our ears out, we will see what information we can find for you. It will not come cheap, necessarily. Clint,” ‘Zeg’s hand was on Clint’s arm, again. He tried not to wince, remembering the feel of ‘Zeg’s neck under his hands in the Peruvian twilight-- or the play of ‘Zeg’s hands on his hips, the last time they had been in Copenhagen together. “Why do this? Why worship at the altar of a fallen god? Fury is dead. SHIELD is no more. You are free.”

“Free?” _Free_. What an odd way to think of having SHIELD, his home for so long now, not only swept away, but revealed to have always had shaky foundations. Free. Free _falling_ , sure. 

“We watched you, when you first joined SHIELD,” ‘Zeg shrugged.

“Aw, you did care!” Clint was startled into a drawl. ‘Zeg smiled at it.

“There, you see? There is the old Hawkeye. Yes, free. You changed. You became… domesticated. Dull. No longer your own man. SHIELD owned you.”

“I made friends and had a home, is what I think you meant, ‘Zeg,” Clint responded. “And work I could do without feeling like I was selling my soul most nights of the week. Maybe it was just weekends, at SHIELD.”

“Then do not sell your soul now. But at all costs walk forward, Clint Barton. SHIELD is behind you. Leave its enemies and its allies to sort themselves in the rubble and come back to where you belong. We have work you could do with us, if it came to that. Pressing matters.” The innuendo was half-hearted at best, and Clint leaned forward to kiss ‘Zeg on the forehead.

“You’re way too kind to me, ‘Zeg. We never trusted each other before.”

“We trusted each other enough to work together. That is as much trust as one person can have for another in this world. Any more and you are a fool. Some young man too smart for his own benefit told us that, ages ago now.”

“That young man grew up,” Clint said, and thought of Nat, and Phil, and just how much trust could be built up in the between times, in the little spaces around missions, until living without them was like living without his bow. He thought of Skye, who’d trusted him without ever knowing his name, who’d trusted him to save Himself before she’d ever met him in person back in Lima.

About ‘Zeg threatening Phil, about himself stepping on ‘Zeg’s prone body on his way to gather Phil up in his arms.

“I’ll think,” he said, over the memory of Phil going stiff and pulling away from him, there in the dusk of the convent courtyard. He’d known that SHIELD had bartered with the Peruvian officials for ‘Zeg, and so had Phil, who had passed the information about ‘Zeg’s incarceration at the Fridge on to Skye. None of them had thought about what SHIELD’s interest in Waarzegster might signify-- or might mean for ‘Zeg. Yet another failure. “Let me know when you have something for me. Send a note to the Adventurer’s Club.”

‘Zeg snorted.

“That horrible tacky place? You stand out there like a wolf among the chickens, Hawkeye. Very well. We will know how to contact you.”

_____

Waarzegster was as good as their word, and a note was waiting for Clint when he came to have breakfast at the club in the morning, still bleary-eyed from an acute lack of coffee.

_Our client has contacted us_ it said. _Her mission is still the same. We have also information on several scientists who disappeared just before SHIELD fell, which may be of interest. Meet us at the bistro at 7 Fortunstraede at 10, and bring the usual sort of currency._

By “the usual sort of currency” ‘Zeg meant information, by preference, and cash in case the information didn’t go far enough. Bogota, Clint thought, would more than pay for what he needed. Big enough to sound important, far enough away to keep safe the secret that SHIELD still existed, still had a Director-- and still had many of his friends.

As Clint made his way next to the canal, nearly swimming through early morning light, he wondered what it would be like to be his own man again, if he could ever have been called that. It had been different, when he and Natasha had paired up in the bad old days. Not so bleak. Not as warm as SHIELD, but… only her to betray him, if anything went wrong. 

Too late to make that choice again, though.

And before he could, he had to make sure Phil and Skye and SHIELD were stable, safe, and on their way to recovery. And that meant he had to-- somehow-- get more information on the Girl in The Flower Dress from Waarzegster. She knew too damn much already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Ravenna sprouts some unusual flowers


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mission gone wrong and a dashing rescue

Melinda watched Coulson settle himself in his suit and his title as the rest of the team gathered around the table, faces ranging from curious (Skye) to eager (Simmons) as they chose chairs. Coulson gave Simmons a warm smile, and she practically shivered with excitement. Melinda raised an eyebrow at him, and he nodded toward the corner of the room that held the coffeepot. She followed him over.

“What’s going on, Phil?”

He’d been _off_ in the mornings lately. Too restless, always looking for something. _Someone_ , maybe. Melinda wished she’d gone to Oregon with the team. No one would talk about what had happened between Coulson and this _Audrey_ , but something had clearly changed about Coulson, within him. He would drift into his own head sometimes, staring at nothing and smiling a nearly hidden, warm smile that Melinda had never seen on his face before. Sometimes he would get just as lost with a scowl and would snap at whoever was closest when he was brought back to himself with a question about his well-being. 

“Simmons has heard from a friend of hers that she knew at Sci-Tech Academy. They’ve been in hiding since the fall of SHIELD and the HYDRA invasion.” Coulson nodded toward Trip. “He and I looked into it, and it seems that one of the science teams-- all instructors-- made it out of the fighting by locking themselves in some sort of explosion containment device that needed a bioprint to open the door. All three people with access were inside that room, so no one could come in after them.”

“That would’ve come in handy at the Hub.” Melinda nearly smiled at him.

“Nah,” Coulson grinned at her. “We’d have had so much less _fun_ hiding than I had kicking Garrett’s butt.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days,” Melinda kept her voice to a quiet murmur, but she couldn’t keep in the huff of laughter at Coulson’s eyeroll. 

“ _Any_ way,” Coulson poured himself another cup of coffee. “Here’s the thing. According to Simmons, these scientists have a particular skillset that could help Fitz, might shorten his recovery. Possibly reverse some of the damage caused by the oxygen deprivation.”

“That doesn’t help us much if they’re in hiding.” Melinda studied his face as he gulped down half the mug. He turned to refill it. “Unless we know where they’re hiding?”

“We do know.” Coulson said, turning back toward the team as they settled in. “They’re all tucked up in Ravenna, just waiting to see how things shake out.”

“So what’s the plan, Director?” She put the slightest extra emphasis on the title, enjoying the way Coulson straightened his shoulders, the twitch of a smile to his lips. She wondered how long until his little boy excitement wore off and the exhausting reality of the job settled in. 

“We’re going to go get them.” Coulson grinned, the predatory smile of a cougar when prey has been scented. Whatever seemed to be bothering him, leading him to bumble around in the early mornings far more than just a coffee-jones could account for, it wasn’t a problem now that he saw a clear course in front of him. “Time to start bringing people in from the cold.”

___

“So we’re, what? Just going to Italy and tell the whole group of them to get on the Bus?” Skye’s face was skeptical, and Melinda mirrored the look back. “How will they know we aren’t HYDRA? How do we know that they’re not?”

“Skye!” Jemma was scandalized. “Sephie is my _friend_. I know her. She knows me! There is no way she’d be HYDRA. And she knows her team. There are only five of them, and they’ve been together for _years_.”

“Okay, okay!” Skye held her hands up in surrender. “You trust them, we trust you. Got it. Still doesn’t answer what we’re going to _do_ with them.”

“That is a fair point,” Coulson interjected. “That we don’t _know_ we can trust all of them, which is why we’re going in armed and alert and expecting trouble. As for what to do with them once we’ve collected them and made certain that they _are_ trustworthy...” He gestured toward Trip. 

“Billy and I have been looking into places to stash them.” Trip poked at his tablet for a moment, and Coulson huffed a small sigh. “Stark Industries might take some. There are various universities that have worked well with SHIELD in the past who would be thrilled to have the skills and education of this group on staff in labs and classrooms.”

“Worst case scenario,” Coulson interrupted him, shooting him an apologetic look that Melinda didn’t for a moment believe was genuine. “We tuck them in here with us for awhile until we can get them to a safe location.” 

“We _need_ to get them somewhere with a lab where they can work on Fitz.” Jemma crossed her arms over her chest, hunching in on herself. Melinda reached up to pat her on the shoulder, smiling at the look of surprised gratefulness that Jemma gave her. “It’s… Sephina, is probably the world’s leading expert on brain regeneration, especially following catastrophic brain injuries. And Doctor Rucker is an expert on eukaryotes. Which is…”

“The study of anything with nucleic cells?” Trip interjected. “Yeah, okay, so these people are studying how to, what, grow new cells? Like to replace damaged brain cells or nerves? That kind of thing, right?”

Jemma gave him one of her blinding smiles. “Exactly, Agent Triplett! They might be able to find a way to, well, _reverse_ the damage to Fitz’s brain, in spite of the oxygen deprivation.”

Melinda almost smiled herself at the sappy look that dripped over Trip’s face in response. And Coulson again scowled before it slid off of his face, and he let out a small snort of humor and held up a hand to cut off any further discussion.

“We’ll do our best, Jemma,” he said gently. “But the first thing we need to do is get them to safety.”

“So where’re we going, boss?” Skye piped up.

“Sephie called me from Ravenna.” Jemma fidgeted, twisting her hands together. “They’d been moving around so much, but… They were going to stay there for awhile.”

“Italy it is, then.” Skye grinned, glancing around the room. 

___

Jemma sat on the edge of her bed brushing her hair for far too long. She lost herself in the _stroke, stroke, stroke_ motion, ignoring the buildup of static as she went. It wasn’t vanity that kept her pinned in place. It was just the thought that she was finally _doing_ something. Helping. Collecting people who could help, would help, get Fitz back on his feet. She was An Important Part of the Team in the field today, as she was the only one who would recognize the scientists they were going to meet. So why couldn’t she put down the brush and put her shoes on?

She was missing a limb without him near her. When she was in the lab, she had to stop herself a hundred times a day from asking for his help, from reaching a hand back to drag him in to see her latest results. She thought of a dozen jokes to tell him and faithfully whispered each one into his ear as she sat by his bed. When his half-closed eyes didn’t flicker, his lips didn’t curve into the smile that she knew better than her own, she forced her heart not to break, forced it to keep beating through sheer power of will alone. 

This team would help. They _would_. They would give her back her right hand, her best friend, her Fitz, who had saved her life through his stubborn refusal to save himself instead.

Jemma stopped brushing and leaned down to slip on her shoes.

____

Trip carefully adjusted the knot on his tie, smoothing the tail down the pressed placket of his dusty green shirt. He buckled on a kevlar vest, checking for wrinkles in the shirt underneath. A black suit coat over top, and he was ready to go. It felt strange to be going into the field without his tac pants on, but Coulson was right; they needed to look a bit more subtle and thoroughly professional. Also, as he’d learned watching Coulson, a well-cut suit was better mental armor than anything else SHIELD had issued. 

He knew he had nothing left to prove after what had gone down at Cybertek, but he still felt like he was trying to establish himself with Ag-- _Director_ Coulson. The man was a legend within SHIELD. The perfect Agent. Fury’s one good eye. The man who brought the Avengers together. Trip had half-expected the man to be seven feet tall and built along the lines of Thor.

Instead, what Trip found was a smallish, unassuming man who walked like he owned the world and met anything thrown at him-- from aliens to rebirth to the collapse of SHIELD-- with a calm little half-smile, a perfectly pressed suit, and a well-timed one-liner. There had to be _something_ Coulson couldn’t do, but Trip was beginning to wonder. And walking in that man’s shadow was, somehow, like having the brightest spotlight in the world trained on every move Trip made. It was both exhilarating and nerve-wracking.

_I wish he’d been assigned as my CO from the beginning,_ Trip thought. _Bet I could have my name whispered with the likes of Barton and Romanov. Still time to get there, though._

Trip grinned into the mirror and shot himself a wink; he looked _good_ like this! He laughed at himself in his monkey suit and Coulson-borrowed attitude for a full minute. He pulled himself together, the last of his giggles ( _manly_ giggles, though; don’t think otherwise) melting away. Icer tucked in his hip holster, he headed out to join the team, nearly flattening Agent Skye. He gallantly offered her his arm as they walked toward the cargo bay.

___

“I still think that me staying here with the Bus is a bad idea, Phil.”

“I need you out here, in case we need backup, Melinda.” Phil didn’t look away from readying himself for the upcoming mission.

She sighed but didn’t argue further.

Phil glanced up from wrestling with the velcro on his vest and found May hovering too close to the edges of his personal space. He quit fidgeting with fastenings and shrugged his shoulders until he felt his shirt settle under the kevlar. He could tell by her look that she wanted to say something else to him, and he waited, not encouraging her to speak, but not putting her off just yet. He no longer resented her observations, since she’d finally swung her loyalty from Fury and “the rules” to himself (or, well, title he now wore). But at least he trusted that her observations were for the sake of SHIELD and not from some obscure desire to dig into Phil’s head for her own knowledge, and she didn’t seem to be going behind his back now. He kept watching her out of the corner of his eye as he checked his sidearm. She finally sucked in a breath to speak as he adjusted his holster.

“Do you have a problem with Agent Triplett?” She shifted on her feet and folded her hands in front of her. “Every time he spoke during the meeting, you seemed to get all… pinched.”

“No!” Phil’s head shot up. “God, no! I just find him… he can be intimidating.” He tried to keep the plaintive note out of his voice. “Is there anything he’s not good at? Because, seriously, he could give a guy a complex…”

“Hmm.” May smiled at him, younger, easier somehow. “That reminds me of what Fury, among others, used to say about another freshly-minted senior agent I once knew. He didn’t get less annoying as he moved up, either.”

“Ha. Funny.” Phil wrinkled his nose at her before giving in to laughter. “Just once, I’d like to see him do _something_ without all the grace and brains and…”

He stopped when May ended up leaning against the doorframe, outright laughing him. They both chuckled themselves into silence, and Phil leaned his fists on the desk.

“Melinda,” he said, looking at his blotter for inspiration; none showed up. “About you staying with the Bus. It’s not that that I don’t trust you to have my back. Quite the opposite, in fact. These scientists, even if none of them _are_ HYDRA, might be being watched.” He stepped around the corner of the desk and stretched to collect his jacket from the arm of his desk chair, hoping he was both subtle enough to avoid hurt feelings and obvious enough for her back off. “If they’re the bait, we’re the prize-winning fish.”

“And if someone has a net out, I should be there to help cut us clear of it.” May waved her hands in front of her face as if to dispel the metaphor before it could get out of hand. “Seriously, _Director_ , I would feel more secure if you had more fighters watching your tail.”

Phil buttoned his jacket and resisted the urge to make sure the tail was covering his rear. “We’ll be _fine_ , Melinda. With the supersoldiers gone, there’s not much that Trip and I can’t handle together.”

Melinda just gave him a look that threatened “I told you so” if he was wrong. He ignored it and gestured her to lead the way down from the command deck.

____

 

_What the_ hell _does an Agent of SHIELD wear when meeting a bunch of scientists that are probably scared out of their minds?_

Skye dropped her latest shirt on the floor and dug through the pile of pre-discarded fabric that she’d already tried on once (or twice. But no more than th… _Shit. I’ve seen this one four times already_ ). She decided that, since she kept coming back to it, it had to be the right one. Right? Right. Fine. Shirt settled.

She flipped her hair back out of her face and scooped up an eyeliner, hoping to make herself look polished, put-together, the girl-version of AC. Well, the young, hot, not-so-suit-wearing girl version of AC. Make-up was such a pain.

A silver case glimmered in the light as she shoved cosmetics back into their bag, and she picked it up, weighing it in her hand. There wasn’t time _now_ , but she really needed to call Ronin again. She wondered if he’d found out anything new since she’d told him about Ravenna. She mostly just wanted to know if he was safe. And, yeah, it’d be nice to just have a conversation with him again about nothing in particular. Like that night they’d slept together. Well, not _slept together_. Just… fallen asleep talking. It was just _good_ to have a friend in all the chaos.

Clothing chosen, war paint on, shoes chosen for their ability to stick with her feet in case of running, Skye decided she was as ready as she would ever be. She stepped out of her bunk and nearly ran into Trip as he came to find her.

“Ready, girl?” He flashed her the full-watt smile, and Skye returned it with a grin of her own.

“As I’ll ever be.”

____

When things went bad, they went bad fast.

Phil had been standing in the nave, as requested, waiting for Dr. Rucker to show up and feeling both over and under-prepared. All things considered, he would have preferred a little less kevlar, and a little more idea what he thought he was doing. 

Two lines of white-robed saints, one side male and the other female, flanked the high archways, each haloed in golden mosaic. All of them judging him. He could just tell. 

“Skye?” he asked into his comm, “Anything yet?”

“A whole lot of tourists with chintzy cameras, but no sign of anyone who looks SHIELD-y or sciencey.” Phil listened to her heavy sigh and heaved one of his own. “Starting to think they’re not going to show.”

“Simmons, report.” Phil turned his back on one row of saints to find the other scowling at him and settled for facing the doorway, staring at the blinding glow of the sunlight that spilled into the space. 

“Nothing, sir!” Jemma’s voice was ticking up through worry and heading well into panic. “I’ve tried calling… there’s just… No answer, and no return call, and Sephie isn’t answering!”

The comforting murmur of Trip’s voice carried through her comm, coming across in stereo.

“I’m sure they're okay.” His voice got sharper as he directed his next comment to Phil. "Coulson, some of these tourists don't look very touristy. Several groups of men standing around with innocent tourist cameras that they aren't pointing innocently, if you follow."

Ice flowed through Phil's veins. "Our team?"

"They've got quite the portrait collection by now, sir." Trip's voice had gone flat and deadly. 

"Get Skye and Simmons out of here. Rendezvous at the Bus." He had barely finished speaking when the ground rocked under him: an explosion in the street. 

Phil pulled off his jacket, knotting the sleeves behind his head to give himself some kind of filter as smoke billowed through the door. He ducked through a side door, looking for a way out and (he was sure, _foolishly_ ) hoping that there was a rear door and that it wasn’t being watched. 

“Agents, stat rep,” he barked. In reply, the com unit in his ear crackled uselessly, and Phil resisted the urge to yank it out and throw it. He’d have to trust Trip to take care of the girls, because yes, his wish for an easy exit had been in vain. The pair of human-shaped brick walls that seemed to materialize in front of him were clearly _not_ the missing science team.

Damn his kevlar vest for making him stand out from the tourist crowd. There had to be a better way to wear body armor. 

_____

On the street in front of St Apollinare Basilica, Trip backed away from the wall where he’d shoved Jemma, instinctively sheltering her from the impact of the blast. The glass of the storefront beside them was cracked, but the display of leather purses inside were still safe. He inventoried his limbs to make certain _he_ was still intact before turning back to survey the smoking wreckage that had once been an illegally parked Fiat. Who used a subcompact car for a bomb? There wasn’t enough room in one of those for a hamster, let alone a decent explosion. There were several people, tourist and suspected villain alike, picking themselves off the ground, but, from what Trip could tell, there appeared to be no casualties. He looked back at Simmons, who nodded at him weakly and then turned to hunt for Skye.

“Trip.” Jemma’s voice was weak but steady. “I think that man has a gun.”

The man she was indicating, standing with a group in the tiny courtyard of the Basilica itself did, indeed, have a gun, and Trip drew his Icer and fired. The man dropped, and Trip turned to run, shoving Jemma in front of him as they headed up the side street behind them where they could, theoretically, escape the line of fire.

“Skye! _Skye!_ ” They were both shouting into their com units, but the only answer they received was static. Jemma kept calling her name, even as she ran for her life. 

_____

It had gotten very loud and very smoky in the street for a moment, and Skye leaned her hands on her knees, coughing out to clear her lungs as she rested against the wall where she’d ended up after backing away from the exploding car. Trip and Jemma were on the far side of the ensuing fire, and the Suspiciously Large, Grim Tourists were congregating near the burning vehicle. The garden-variety tourists were all starting to book it away from the fire, and Skye concluded that they provided a better example to follow than the obvious criminals. AC was still in the basilica proper, but there was no way to get to him without attracting the attention of the… Oh.

Yes, attracting the attention of the Suspiciously Large Tourists who were now looking at her and beginning to advance.

Clearly, it was time to find an elsewhere to be. Like down that nice side street and around back of the Basilica garden. There were some shaggy, overgrown gardens that way, and she could probably find a nice place to hide while she waited for comms to come back up or AC to make a break for it out the back of the building. She took off, mentally following the Google map she’d studied on the flight toward Ravenna the day before. 

____

Melinda cursed as the explosion crackled over the coms, and then all the sounds faded to static. She ripped the headphones off and climbed out of the pilot’s seat.

“Dammit, Coulson, I _told_ you I needed to be on the ground!” She stalked through the common area of the Bus, still growling and grousing. “This would have been an excellent time to go against your orders, _Sir_ , since your orders were clearly wrong. One of these days, you’ll learn to listen when I tell you something.” She shook her head. “I should have insisted on going with you!”

She trotted down the steps to the cargo bay and lowered the rear door, stomping down the ramp. The SUV wasn’t large enough to hold them all, should they somehow manage to find a scientist or two. She stepped out on the tarmac (for a given value of “tarmac”) and looked around the grounds of the airport (for a given value of “airport”), wondering if she could find something that would…

Ah. There. That would do it. She ignored the incredulous looks of the nearby skydiving team and stomped over to the vehicle, smiling to herself as she climbed into the driver’s seat. 

_This should do it. This should work just fine._

____

Phil got off one clear shot, dropping the first goon with an Icer headshot, but the second man was far lighter on his feet than he should have been. His forearm crashed across Phil's wrist, and the gun skittered away across the footstep-worn cobbles of the ancient floor. Phil twirled out of reach as the giant swung for his head. The man charged, and Phil planted his feet and _punched_ , throwing his shoulders into the hit. The bones in Phil's fist crunched together uncomfortably, but his opponent dropped after pirouetting into unconsciousness. 

_Just like a Fantasia hippo_. Phil would never forget the image, nor would he ever forgive Clint for implanting it in his brain during that ugly little brawl in some smelly back alley in Istanbul. Phil wasn't sure if the comparison of himself to a dancing crocodile-- or was it an alligator?-- had been intended as a compliment or not. It had been so hard to tell with Clint in the early days.

With a heavy sigh and quick glance through the doors for any lurking extra goons, Phil retrieved his sidearm and told himself to focus on getting out and finding his team. A sudden wave of worry for Skye and Jemma made it easy to forget African ballet creatures and bewitchingly beautiful boys with big mouths and bigger biceps. 

He sidled through the door and skirted the edge of an overgrown courtyard-cum-garden. The heavily chained, padlocked gate did not make him swear aloud, but only because he caught sight of an armed lurker beyond. Phil quickly ducked back the opposite direction, hunting for a section of wall he could scale or a different lock to pick.

It took far longer than he would have liked, and nearly falling flat on his face as he tripped over a brick, but Phil finally found a distressed bit of wall and cleared the garden, leaving behind only small traces of skin and dignity. His earbud had cracked to life a few times as he worked, and the voices of each member of his team had been catalogued with growing relief. If only Phil knew where the _Hell_ he'd come out, he'd have been feeling downright chipper. As it was, his smartphone was benched for possible HYDRA infestation, his tablet was lying on his desk back on the Bus, and his computer-wielding protege was nowhere to be found. For once, the civilians in the area had actually taken cover when the explosions started, and he couldn't find a straggler to ask for directions.

The next group he stumbled into the center of was clearly _not_ from a guided tour, and Phil threw a few more punches and landed several kicks in delicate places before he struggled free and managed to begin running again.

At least his physical therapy with the treadmill was finally paying dividends.

____

 

Skye dashed around the last corner into the little grassy courtyard, shaded by trees taller than the surrounding buildings, and the sounds of the street, the yelling and honking and car alarms and general chaos, suddenly hushed. She felt like she'd stepped into gelatin for a moment, stuck in the still air. To her left was an alley, visible through a locked gate, low brick walls, a wrought-iron fence, and the ruins. Ruins attached to a still-functional stucco building, with neat iron balconies. Ruins just sitting there in a normal yard, as if every block had its own two-story half-destroyed stone gallery at the end of it.

One thing she could say about SHIELD: you did get to a damn amazing set of places.

'Course, it turned out you spent most of your time in them too busy trying to avoid capture to read the plaques.

Quiet as it was, the Tourists were at best a block behind, and she had to _move_. She made for the gate, only to reverse direction abruptly when a large dark SUV squealed to a halt just behind it. There was only time for a brief glance towards the iron fence-- maybe she could squeeze through?-- before she heard voices from the alley, a man shouting to others "go both ways!" There was no way she could get herself through the fence before her pursuers reached it.

That left the potted plant in its concrete urn as the largest bit of cover in the garden-- and yes it was big, maybe hip-height on her, but any halfway decent mercenary goon was going to look behind it first thing. Her only chance, and it wasn't a big one, was the ruins. She ducked low and raced over to them, stumbling down into the low secluded space and praying her heartbeat wasn't as loud as it sounded in her own ears. 

The atmosphere was cool and dark underneath the half-fallen stone arches, but shallow, barely more than a corridor in width. Skye figured it was probably the remnants of an old covered walk, maybe part of a cloister-- it seemed like the kind of place that processions of monks might have passed down, or nuns, or maybe merely generations of servants hurrying on their way to larger, better-lit portions of an old estate. The arches on the exterior wall of the corridor were all open, but more wrought iron showed at each gap. (There was also a plaque, placed about eye-height on the wall, and again-- too busy trying to avoid capture. No time for reading.)

The gaps between the iron bars of the fence still looked like her best bet-- either to squeeze her skinny ass through or, at a last resort, try and go over. Well, at least she'd have a moment of privacy, as she tried to squirm through like a hamster. A fighting chance. Skye made for the archway in the most-shadowed corner of the ruins.

"Hello, Skye."

Raina stepped out of the shadows, hands folded in front of her, wearing a neat white dress printed with orchids. 

"No," Skye said reflexively, and backed up. 

Suddenly, the squads of Suspiciously Large Tourists made perfect sense. In reconstructing what had happened at Cybertek before their team arrived, AC had learned that Raina'd escaped with Ian Quinn after it had become clear that John Garrett had turned into a homicidal nutjob with delusions of grandeur. No surprise there-- neither Quinn nor Raina struck her as the sort to be personally loyal to Garrett. Quinn wasn't really loyal to much except his own hide, Skye thought. Raina... Raina had an _agenda_ , that much had been evident from the start. With Quinn funding her, she'd have more than enough money to pull something like this. 

So the real question was, what were her current plans, how did Skye fit in, and how the _hell_ could she get out of them?

"I'm not going to do anything." Raina turned her hands palm up, showing them neat, well-manicured, and empty. "I just want to talk."

"You just want to stall me until your thugs get here," Skye said, going for a tone she hoped came off as insouciant and Coulson-esque, while she started stepping carefully away. Raina tilted her head and smiled.

"A little, yes. But it would be better if you came with me voluntarily, my dear. I know so much about you, and you know so little. I could show you, if you like. Aren't you curious?" She didn't bother to follow Skye, damn her, just stood there, palms open, like a statue in the still air.

"Always, but there's nothing you could show me that I couldn't figure out on my own." That was almost laughably untrue, she'd found nothing on her own, not for years. _Not until AC came along._ Raina _had_ to know, right? Just how not-tempting her creepy-ass Disney villain thing was, when Skye already _had_ someone she'd follow to the edges of the Earth? 

_Of course she does, or she's finding out right now if she doesn't. She's playing with you._ Skye debated dumping her bag, in case she needed to fight. Widened her feet, just like Ward had shown her... (Ward. Goddamn-- as if she needed to be reminded about her poor decisions in the trust department.)

"Isn't there? Nothing you're interested in? About your past? About your parents?"

"I know enough about my past," Skye snapped back. Because, yes, of course, but did Raina really think she was stupid enough to fall for this? This wasn't an offer, it was a threat.

"Do you know your father? _I_ do. He has a picture of you now," Raina purred, and the blood turned to ice in Skye's veins.

"What?"

"He and your Mother, chasing after you-- did you know that? They wanted you so _desperately_ " Raina held both hands out now, took one step forward. "I'm envious, I admit. That you were so loved, they destroyed a village for you."

What the hell-- what the _hell_? The village? She was the 0-8-4, she'd known that, the thing so precious that an entire village and a team of SHIELD agents died to keep her safe, to pass her from family to family, to keep her hidden from the things hunting for her... her parents?

Skye shook her head. AC would have told her-- he'd told her everything else, he wouldn't have hid that.

_If he knew._ The thought that he might not have... now _that_ was chilling.

_Am I a liability to my team, just by being on it?_

"They were willing to do anything," Raina's voice slunk into her ear, "to save their little monster."

_Monster._

_There's darkness inside you, too,_ Ward had said. 

"You told Ward," Skye intended it to come out as an accusation, but accusations were usually less wobbly. She had frankly not paid much attention to what he was saying at the time, because for one thing she was kind of in the middle of trying to distract him until May could get around to kicking his ass. And for another thing, if she thought too hard about the meaning behind it, she was gonna vomit. 

Since then, after they'd won and Ward and his broken larynx had been carted off and they'd started to piece together what had happened on the Bus while it had been under Garrett's control, Skye'd wondered how much Ward knew about the GH-325. Raina knew enough about it to try and synthesize it; at least, she knew enough to have used it on Garrett. (And Garrett had gone mad. Er. Madder. ) But now... now she wondered if Raina'd told Ward about her past. 

If Grant Ward had said that to her, tried to draw affinities between them, using pieces of her past so intimate she didn't know they existed. The thought made her sick.

_I will never be like you, Grant Ward._

Raina shrugged.

"Yes I told him. I thought it might be an... incentive. A reminder that there were considerations, worlds outside John Garrett's own twisted machinations. I hoped it might keep him from obeying Garrett too blindly."

"Didn't work," Skye rasped. "And what, you wanted him to obey you, instead?"

"Some boys just need to be leashed and led," Raina told her, and she sounded indulgent as she said it. "You can't trust them on their own. Far better me than that megalomaniacal fool, don’t you agree? Poor Grant, I imagine you took care of him for me." May had, at any rate. Taken care of him so well Ward wouldn't be speaking for quite a long time. _And isn't that ironic? Now I wish I could have shaken whatever she told him out of him. Could have avoided this ambush._ Raina was advancing now a little, still talking. "Keep him, a little longer. The darkness inside him is drowning him. But _you_ , Skye. You're like me. We _are_ evolution, Skye. We are what the world can become. Don't you want to come and see who you are?"

It was becoming far too much, Raina's voice curling around her in the filtered dimness of the ruins, her past, her parents, her former-- _what? my former what?_ \-- and now she'd gone nearly as abstract as Garrett at the end. The words crashed down on Skye so hard she couldn't manage to make the phonemes form any meaning at all. The best she could do was file them away, memorize, watch them fly by. Time to figure out what they meant later. Right now, Skye was dimly aware she was being herded away from the open archway, step by minute step. Some internal alarm was beginning to go off in her head.

_She_ told you she was stalling.

"I think... we're done here," Skye started to say, just as the gas canister rolled onto the worn stone floor between them, landing with an ominous clink. Skye took one look, and leapt for the archway, clinging to the fence and pressing her face between the cool iron bars as the canister exploded.

As soon as the explosion ended, Skye looked back. Sickly-colored gas was roiling from the canister in waves, curling tendrils up and out, dispersing into a the air in a murky haze. Raina watched Skye calmly, a delicate little mask pressed to her face, until she disappeared in the rising cloud of pale green. If there'd been any breeze at all, Skye'd have been gone already. Even so, the gas was going to reach Skye soon, or Raina's special Tourist friends were going to come in and get her. A quick press through the bars proved she was never gonna make it that way-- whatever the GH-325 or her own parents had made of her, she wasn't half rodent. 

Skye put a foot on the fence and pulled, cursing her height. She was also far too short to reach the spiked top. _And also not an acrobat._

Behind her, she heard running footsteps.

The gas circled closer in the still air.

Her eyes began to burn.

Fuck.

"Hey!" The shout was coming from somewhere up above. That was the only thought Skye managed before something dropped next to her with a sharp thump.

She looked over to find a rope dangling beside her.

Well, a rope-like thing, anyway. Maybe a line was the most proper term. It was awfully skinny to be a rope, and if it was intended to pull her ass out of the impending fire, she damn well hoped it was stronger than it looked. It _was_ kind of high-tech looking and a little shiny and _oh my God, Skye, don't analyze, just grab!_

She grabbed.

There was a brief moment of panic, sharp as a porcupine lodged in her craw, as she was yanked upwards off her feet, and her elbows and armpits went tight. 

_Ow._

A thought half-formed that the person at the top of the rope might not actually be friendly.

Only _half_ formed, though, because her thinking was slowing suddenly, a little green at the edges, and the rest of her was moving upwards very fast. So by the time the thought had started to occur, she was already up, scrabbling for purchase on a broken slate roof. A truly spectacular arm had wrapped around her waist and pulled her up, easy as if she were a child. She looked down at it, took in the thick black sleeve, the black gloved hand pressed against her kidney, the gold edging of the gauntlet covering her navel.

"Good timing," she grunted, trying to appear less breathless than she was, and Ronin laughed behind her.

Of course. 

Of _course_ it was him.

And of _course_ , just as soon as she saw Ronin in the mask for the first time since Lima, since he’d shuffled off the Bus with his tail between his legs, for the first time since SHIELD fell, of _course_ it would go this way.

Skye'd never managed to live anything that could reasonably be called a quiet life, and since she'd half-infiltrated, half-been shanghai'd into SHIELD, things had only gotten exponentially more absurd. Also, she'd noticed that Ronin had a tendency to attract the surreal himself, so all things considered, it had been a dead certainty: of _course_ Raina’s goons spotted them. 

And of _course_ they had no problem shooting up at the rooftop, from where they were milling about in the garden below the ruins and the stucco building next door, gas masks making them look like angry ants. Smoke and gas roiled up around them. Angry ants from hell-- put that way, it sounded positively gothic.

“Wow, that’s some impressively bad aim,” Ronin said as he pushed Skye down to sprawl on the tiles. 

“Might be the knockout gas they tossed down below making it hard to see,” she said, and he nodded, judiciously. 

“Poor planning on their part. Want to get out of here?”

Skye wanted that, yes. She wanted it so badly she could even forego yelling at Ronin for not _telling_ her he was coming (or how the hell he’d been able to find them.) There’d be time for plenty of yelling later, she hoped.

Ronin reached behind himself and unhooked the grappling line he’d lowered to her, then turned fully and started fiddling with a heap of equipment he’d evidently tucked under the parapet. She glanced at him as he did. Now that she knew what that thick black and gold suit hid, a pale gold face with a fading black eye and a changeable smile, everything about him seemed a little _less_ animated than it had before. Which wasn’t to say he couldn’t still telegraph a whole range of reactions with no more than a head-tilt or shrug. It was just that now she knew it was, quite literally, a shadow of his true nature. A photo negative of the golden man with the shadows under his eyes.

_Helluva thing to think about while under fire, Skye. Sure you didn’t take some of that gas after all?_

(She probably had, to be quite honest. Best to get out of there _quickly_.)

“Okay, move back a sec,” Ronin said, breaking her out of her haze, and she realized that the heap he’d been sorting through had included a freakin’ actual _bow_ , because he had it in his hands, arrow on the string, and was aiming at a balcony a few buildings away. “Not gonna be fancy, but it will work,” he muttered, and released the arrow. 

Somehow, nothing in the movies-- animated or real-- had prepared her for how _fast_ an arrow flew, how the soft thrum of the string going slack was as insidious as the click of a round being chambered, or just how heart-stopping it was to watch the damn thing trail a line as it flew-- one Ronin grabbed onto, just before he reached around her, bow still clutched in his hand.

And then she was pressed tight against his body, face muffled in his shoulder. The hard line of the bow pressed into her back. She clutched at him reflexively, hands sliding under the quiver he’d slung across his back, just as he pushed them off into open air and they were swinging.

“Oh,” Skye said, when they hit the pavement, and collapsed to her knees.

“Not now, Skye,” Ronin said above her, and she glanced up just in time to watch as a large body flew over her head. It thumped down like a ragdoll, just inside her line of vision. When she turned back, Ronin was engaging two other goons, sweeping one off his feet with a swing of the bow before turning on the other with a grace that reminded her far more of Melinda May than of Grant Ward, despite his considerable bulk.

“Oh,” she said again, realizing belatedly that she’d missed seeing him in action in Lima.

Or in Bogota, for that matter. 

She finally fully understood his complete nonchalance as he helped her hack into an NSA database just after taking out an entire station full of ex-SHIELD agents who were _supposed_ to be his jailers.

More even than May, violence was something as usual to him as putting on pants in the morning.

She ought, probably, to find that a hell of a lot more scary, a hell of a lot less hot.

SHIELD was _so_ fucking with her priorities.

Also… also… wait.

“You’re _Hawkeye_ ” she whispered, just as he finished off the second goon with a chop to the side of his neck that had him collapsing like a ragdoll. 

Roni-- Hawkeye-- turned to her, and tilted his mask quizzically.

“Hawkeye’s not the only one who uses a paleolithic weapon, Skye.” 

“Bull _shit_ ” she said, pulling herself to her feet. “That’s how you know AC. He put the Avengers together. You’re an Avenger. I’ve just been rescued by an actual Avenger.”

Then she snapped her mouth shut, before she could _really_ start to babble, stupid things like _that’s why you needed me to find AC-- because Fury wouldn’t let you guys know he was alive_ and _holy shit you’re an actual fucking superhero_ or even, far more insidiously, _you could have just told me, you didn’t have to pretend. I’d have done anything--_. Because that? Was unfair-- and unsafe. Seriously unsafe. 

“Oh, god, just… don’t, okay? No one gets to know. And… don’t.” he said, and grabbed her arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Sure thing… Legolas.”

“God, no, Skye, not you too.”

They ran. 

And _ran_ , and apparently Skye needed to add more treadmill work to her “Couch to Badass Agent” exercise regimen, because holy hell the life of a covert operative seemed to involve a lot of running.

Her legs were like jello, her lungs burning, by the time the van hove into view around the corner. Hawkeye was just behind her, one hand pressed to the small of her back-- and no, better to keep thinking of him as “Ronin,” or she was going to go all gooey at the knees. She felt him pause as the van’s back cargo door opened and Jemma backed out, her cell phone held up to the sky.

She hadn’t seen them yet, and Skye knew she should tell Ronin it was okay, he could go, but she was feeling both befuddled and selfish, and if he left now, when would he be back?

_He hasn’t seen AC yet. And I can’t keep Jemma_ and _myself safe right now._

“Can anyone hear me?” she heard Jemma call into her phone, and then the van went up and her world turned upside down.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope and Heartbreak

Skye was out for, at most, a moment and a half, but it was long enough, apparently, for a building to come down on top of her.

No, not a building: Ronin. 

That was the bulk pushing her down into the cobbles, covering her entire body, suffocating her.

He was up before she had a chance to protest; she saw his feet heading for the oily, roiling smoke, the orange flames licking out of the cargo door of the van, climbing through all the windows.

There was a crumpled heap lying in the street, and he picked it up by the armpits. As he pulled it away from the van, a gout of heat and smoke rocked him, made him stumble forward for a moment.

Nevertheless, he delivered the heap of sacks to her.

Jemma.

Skye crawled over, and flopped her head down on Jemma’s chest. It rose and fell, shallowly but consistently. 

“Thank god,” she muttered, and then looked up.

“Ronin?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you know you’re on fire?”

He was, too, his shoulders smoldering, streaky plumes beginning to rise from them. And yeah, sure, Ronin was smokin’, but not usually like that.

“Fuck!” he cried, and scrambled to pull off his jacket. 

Once it was off, he stamped down, over and over, fast first and then slowing. Two last fitful little stomps and he was done.

Oh, and the smoke must really be getting to her now, because she was caught admiring his arms and shoulders again. Nothing she’d seen on the tiny little cam had prepared her to see _those_ in person, the generous curves of the biceps, the ropy veins curling down his forearms, the scattering of pale hair and freckles and soot. _So that’s what a superhero’s arms look like up close: dreamy_.

“Skye! Jemma!” 

“Trip?” Skye rasped, momentarily distracted.

“You there?” she couldn’t see him yet, but heard his voice coming down the cross-street.

“Yeah!” she managed, and coughed.

“Great! Is Coulson with you?”

“No!”

“ _Fuck_.” Trip cursed, and came around a corner. And then “Fuck!” again as he saw them. “I can’t leave any of you alone today-- everyone getting themselves into trouble. I lost track of Coulson in the muddle.”

“Go find him,” Skye said, and Trip shook his head. He’d lost that sleek black suit jacket somewhere in the fight. He’d also lost his tie, and that green dress shirt that made him look unbearably _suave_ was rumpled and rolled-up under the kevlar vest. It ought to have looked completely wrong when paired with black pleated suit pants, but somehow it only made the whole thing more Trip.

“If I don’t get you two to safety first, he’s gonna kill me,” Trip responded, and went to scoop her up. She scowled at his biceps, just to see if the gas would make her think ill-timed poetic thoughts about them, too. They were leaner than Ronin’s, but glistening in the hazy sunlight, and up close they were so smooth, so close-grained… and evidently that was a “yes” on the ill-timed thoughts.

Speaking of Ronin, there he was, a blonde head and remarkable shock of shoulders peeping around the blackened Dacia down the block. He’d clearly either seen or heard them, because he tapped his chest, then made a kind of two-finger motion from his eyes on up, ending on a thumbs-up.

_God, I hope that means I’ll go find Phil_ , Skye thought.

“Okay,” she said aloud, pushing off of Trip, “you win. Get Jemma and let’s get off the street. _Then_ we look for Coulson.”

\-----

Phil stumbled as another explosion ripped through the quiet of the afternoon. He kept his feet, but felt himself flagging. A few well-timed shots to the rear had thinned the ranks of his pursuers, but he was beginning to think it was only a matter of time before the last one caught up to him. He wished he could loosen his vest, but that would have ended his merry little race before it got much further. So he sucked in air as hard as he could and ran on. 

Several more of the burly-not-brainy types shimmered into existence on his six, and Phil was regretting his lack of spare clips for the Icer. _Damned doorways and their damned ability to hide bad guys!_ Phil knew his steps were slowing, knew that the goons behind him were fresher. Knew he was about to go down hard… and then he heard the softest sound of wind, a _very familiar_ hsssthunk, and turned to see that his nearest pursuer had sprouted feathers under his throat.

Arousal was _probably_ the wrong response, but conditioning was so very difficult to overcome. 

\----

The slate tiles shifted under his feet as Clint scrambled up them, but he didn’t let it slow him down. The last Skye had heard from him, Phil had still been in the nave, looking for a bad guy-free exit and trying not to make a scene inside a delicate old building filled with civilians (for once in his life). Clint sincerely hoped he’d found a back exit. 

As he reached the top of the roof, Clint looked over at the tangle of buildings and little courtyards that made up the grounds of the Basilica. His mask was gone; between the smoke from the van and and upward draft from the gas canister earlier, the fabric had been making him feel stuffy and light-headed, which he could not in any way afford. 

Between the bow and his face, he was probably recognizable to more people than just Skye as Hawkeye, but hopefully enough of his costume was gone that no-one would realize Ronin had ever been present. Clint had faded away from the scene with the van as soon as Agent Triplett arrived to help Simmons, found a nearby building with nice handholds, and begun to climb. At least up here, he was confident he could back Phil up if the man was outside anywhere in the vicinity.

As for finding him, it turned out that all Clint needed to do was look for the writhing mass of goons. Shouts below him drew his attention; ah-- here they came now, four of them boiling out of several doors, chasing a lone man in shirtsleeves and a vest. 

_Hello, Phil, I see we still have problems sitting back and letting other people handle the dirty work._

Clint waited until the lead guy had nearly caught up to Phil before he let the arrow fly. Moments later, Phil’s pursuers were down, and Clint tried to turn to go. 

_Come on, feet._ They moved, but it was toward the edge of the roof instead of back the way he’d come. _Aww, feet._

He stopped arguing with himself as soon as his grappling arrow had bitten into the tiles at his feet, and he grabbed the line to swing himself to the street, staring down into Phil’s upturned, frankly astonished face all the way.

\-----

"Okay, this looks bad,” Clint was speaking almost before his boots hit the street. "Hullo, Phil. Guess you weren’t expecting me. I…” He trailed off and smiled, the fake-timid, I’m-so-harmless grin that he always used to try to get out of trouble when he knew he was in over his head. Phil tried to answer, but he couldn’t get his jaw to climb off the ground, let alone make intelligible sounds.

“Agah?” Phil scrolled back over the last forty-five minutes of his life, trying to figure out when he’d hit his head. Or was this a new symptom of the GHB madness? Hallucinations seemed to be in line with a full mental breakdown, and there was no way that Clint-- looking like _that_ \-- was actually in Ravenna, Italy. Phil got his mouth closed, blinked rapidly, saw a bead of sweat tracing through the soot on the side of Clint’s jaw, and felt his mouth flop open uselessly again. “Cah?”

“Phil?” Clint took two steps forward, hand reaching out. And then he stiffened and backed away. “Coulson? Sir?”

_Wrong way! Come back!_ Phil knew he had to get words to form, quickly, before Clint shimmered and vanished. Or climbed back up his rope. The method of leaving would, of course, depend on whether he was really there or a mere figment. Phil forced his mouth to work.

“Clint?” He could hear the rasp in his own voice, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Agent Barton. Wha…?” He cleared his throat a second time. “Why you…” Well, conversation wasn’t working. Phil’s brain defaulted to operation technicalities. “Report.” 

“Heard a rumor that Raina was sniffing around your scientists.” Clint reached up to grab the back of his neck, and Phil was momentarily distracted by the ripples of muscle that chased along his arm and chest and abs. “Was going for eyes on to check your team’s security, and heading out before you...” He trailed off and one corner of his mouth twitched up again, a cracked and broken version of his usual cocky grin. “Saw you were… Didn’t mean to interfere. Didn’t mean to be seen…” He bit his lip, clearly trying to suck in the words he’d just spoken.

Phil’s throat went entirely dry, and his tongue affixed itself quite solidly to the roof of his mouth. Clint was _here_. Again appearing out of the sky like an Avenging angel to yank Phil’s chestnuts out of the fire. But he hadn’t intended to be seen by Phil. Hadn’t wanted Phil to know he was so near. Avoiding him. Phil’s breath caught in chest in a ragged, unexpected sob, and he choked and began coughing.

“You okay, sir? I…”

Phil waved him back, not trusting himself not to fall to the ground, clutch his arms around those legs and beg for… He had no idea what he’d be pleading for. He sucked down air, reaching up to loosen his tie and unbutton his collar. No time to fall apart just yet; first he had to figure out exactly what Clint was doing here. And then he had to find his team.

“Fine,” Phil wheezed. “I’m fine. Just… catching my breath.” He panted a bit more. Getting his breathing under control, Phil squared his shoulders. “I’m gl…”

A shout from the end of the street interrupted him, and Clint had his bow up, arrow knocked, released, and flying before Phil could register the danger.

“Time to get out of here, sir.” Clint put a hand on his rope, and Phil forced himself not to leap forward, grab one of those biceps, and drag Clint into his arms.

“Yes, not here. This is… We need to…” Phil looked around, frantically searching for a way to keep Clint with him, but to get them both off the street. _There_

“That tower.” Phil pointed across the street and a small grassy courtyard. He was nearly frantic to keep from losing sight of the sweat-glistening, soot-streaked expanse of those shoulders. “There. We’ll… Meet me... I need to… More information.”

Phil wished someone would slap him. Jerk him out of his impending hysteria, wake him from what was _clearly_ a fever dream. Because Clint in nothing but the bottom half of his Ronin outfit, bow in hand and glowing in the late afternoon sunlight? Well, Phil would be lying if he tried to say he hadn’t pictured Clint just like this before. 

He got a grip on himself through years of long practice in the face of this particular distraction and gestured again to the crumbling tower. 

“Reconnaissance and mission report, up there.” He pointed at the line Clint had skidded down moments before. “You take the high road and cover my tail?”

A peculiar expression trickled slowly across Clint’s features, wrinkling his eyebrows, his nose, his eyes, his mouth in turn before fading away to intentional blankness. He took a breath as if in preparation for speech, held it a moment, gave a sharp nod, and turned to grab the rope before letting it back out in a heavy sigh. Phil tried not to imagine catching one of those enormous biceps and spinning Clint around, trapping the heat of him in the circle of his arms, tracing the path of that unhappy scrunch with his lips and promises that he’d never be so remarkably _blind_ again.

“Good to see you, sir.” Clint’s voice was so soft that Phil nearly missed it. He fought the urge to grab the back of those sinfully tight pants and yank that body straight back into an embrace, knowing it wouldn’t be appropriate. Not now. Not after Lima. “See you there in three minutes or less.” 

More gruff shouts from a short distance up the street whisked away thoughts of demanding what the _fuck_ Clint thought he was playing at, kissing that perfectly pouting mouth, or just latching onto that broad back and clinging with the firm intention of never letting go. A well-timed arrow into the thigh of the leading goon tangled the whole crowd that now boiled around the corner at the far end of the block, and Phil sucked in air for one more run. He was dreading the stairs at the other end, but it was still a better option than standing here and waiting for a bullet to the face.

_It’s a better option than letting Clint just disappear._

\-----

It had _seemed_ like a solid plan. Find out that Raina was going searching for certain SHIELD scientists that Phil and his team had a particular interest in; hurry his happy ass to Ravenna; look for the fight; cause a little distraction… The problem was, _that_ was the extent of Clint’s planning. He hadn’t _exactly_ figured out what would happen should he find himself here: faced with going into an enclosed room with the single most dangerous man he’d ever met. 

And _God_ was he dangerous! Clint’s brain had momentarily derailed when those big, sure hands had started loosening the smooth silk of his tie, and then that button had come loose, and Clint found himself given a further two centimeters of throat with which to cope. If he hadn’t been worried that Phil was trying to choke to death right there in the street, he’d have been on him in a second. What the _hell_ was that team of his thinking, letting Phil run around in nothing but his forearms and body armor? That sort of thing had to be banned under the Geneva Convention. 

He shook it off, reminding himself that this was _not_ the time to be drooling over Phil’s wrists. Or the way his shoulders filled out the shirt around his vest. _He doesn’t_ want _you, Barton. At least, not enough._ Clint took a firm grip on his libido. No matter _how_ good the man looked in Kevlar, it wasn’t enough. Touching Phil would be moving backward, and the Clint that was back there… He had a sudden memory of half-frozen burritos and row upon row of empty beer bottles from his breakdown after Lima. After the scene in Phil’s office. After Clint told Phil he just wanted out. After he’d run to keep from being thrown out. No, he wouldn’t let himself be that again. There were too many people counting on Clint keeping his shit together; _Clint_ was counting on keeping his shit together. He’d stay back, look but not touch, keep from burning himself-- losing himself-- in Phil’s brilliant glow. 

_So rule number one: No Touching._ Not even when Phil’s hair was ruffled from running, and his forehead freckles stood out against the flush of his recent exertions.

Clint whimpered as he pulled himself over the lip of the roof and turned to track Phil’s path up the block. He gave himself one painful, wistful moment to just _look_ , to rememorize the prowl to Phil’s strut, to admire the cut of the slacks from the rear view. 

_Cover his tail?_ Clint huffed a laugh as he nocked an arrow. _I’d never let anyone else near it ever again if I had my way._ He blinked hard to clear his suddenly damp eyes and released, already drawing the next grappling arrow to fire through a vacant window at the top of the tower before his first shot had found its home in the thug’s thigh. He leapt from the roof, line in hand, unable to tell if the swooping sensation in his gut was from the sudden awareness of gravity or the certain knowledge that he was going to be near Phil again when he got to the other side.

\-----

Phil was huffing by the time he reached the top of the tower. He took the last flight of steps slowly, half in fear of the whole staircase collapsing under him, and half to try to get himself put back into some sort of order before he reached the top. So he hadn’t exactly handled the meeting in the street with the panache he’d been hoping for, but how was he supposed to cope with so very much _Clint_ when he’d been relegated to nothing but fantasies and memories for so long. How was he supposed to cope with so much skin when he _clearly_ wasn’t allowed to touch? 

His mind supplied a quick replay of Clint reaching out only to draw back. Of Clint turning away as quickly as he could. Of Clint saying “Didn’t mean to be seen.” As if he knew, as if he was _punishing_ Phil for wanting so badly to _see_. But they were both here, and Phil wouldn’t hide behind his fear. He _wouldn’t_. This was his chance. 

And as soon as he knew what was going on-- 

_No._ To hell with knowing what was going on. _Now, Coulson. You’re doing this now._

The top of a crumbling tower wasn’t _exactly_ what he’d had in mind for this conversation, but it was the best he had to hand. A moment alone was a moment he wasn’t going to pass up. Again. Also, they didn’t have to have the entire conversation right then. Phil just needed to get the words out, tell Clint how he felt, and then, maybe, when this was over, he could get Clint back on the Bus with him, and they could figure out where to go from there.

_Go in there and apologize, tell him how you feel, ask him to forgive you, and keep your shit together, no matter how he answers._

He smoothed his hair, checked the folds of his cuffs, straightened his body armor… and then snorted a laugh at how ridiculous he was being. Clint had never cared much how Phil looked, but hopefully he’d care about what Phil had to say. 

Clint was lounging on a bench when Phil rounded the last corner, body loose and a broad smile on his face. Every inch of him was posed to show how relaxed he was… excepting the one fist tightly clenched where it rested against his thigh. The bench itself was almost as out of place as a half-naked archer in this tiny room. It appeared to have been removed from someone’s garden and dragged up the hundreds of thousands of stairs (possibly a slight exaggeration, but Phil’s legs were still trembling) to be parked in the center of this silent, ancient space. Clint flung one arm along the back and grinned, wolfish and cold.

“Hullo, _Director_.” Clint’s drawl was just a fraction shy of barbed. He eyed Phil warily, taking in the rumpled, dusty remains of a suit, lingering on the tracks of dried blood where the wall he had vaulted had chewed up his arms. Phil suddenly, fervently wished he hadn’t left his jacket behind in the nave. “What’d you need to see me about, because I’m still not sure I exactly work for you anymore.”

The clear “keep away” message in Clint’s tone, his eyes, in every line of his body stung, but Phil figured he deserved snark at the very least. Being called by his _title_ however…

“Agent Barton.” His own voice was so sharply professional it nearly cut his own tongue. “Glad you could join us. We’d have made arrangements for your travel and accommodations, if we’d known you were coming.” No matter how impersonal he managed to make his words and tone, however, Phil could not have stopped his feet from picking their way across the age-pocked stones of the floor toward the bench where Clint was lounging. His fingers twitched against his thigh, but he forced himself to keep his hands hanging down, not reaching.

“A spur of the moment kind of thing.” Clint looked away and swallowed; Phil inched closer. “Heard a rumor Ravenna could be getting unexpectedly hot. Might grow some _flowers_. Thought I should get down here and give you a warning. Maybe lend a hand.”

“And this hybrid Ronin-Hawkeye look? Are you trying something new?” Phil raised an eyebrow, folding his arms tightly across his chest, trying to contain his sudden trembling. He struggled to keep his voice mild, to use the same bland banter they’d established decades before. Sticking to the mock-serious tone that Clint had learned early on to recognize as teasing. “You realize that, since SHIELD _does_ still exist, you do still have _some_ uniform requirements, right?”

Clint snorted bitterly. “Can’t see much use for Hawkeye in your ranks right now, _sir_.” This time the word was not an endearment. “Not sure I’m ready to be brought back in just yet.”

“What are you _doing_ here, Clint?” Phil was done jousting. Clint could yell at him or not, answer him or not. He didn’t care anymore. It hurt too much to keep up the front, and Phil felt all his walls collapse at once. Unfortunately, they seemed to take his resolve with them, and Phil forgot what he’d been meaning to say. Instead, what came out was, “How long have you been in this tangle?”

“Since near the beginning, I think.” Clint turned to look out the window, swinging his feet up to the seat and folding his arms on top of his knees. “Heard the first explosion and at least figured out where you were pretty easy from that. Took me awhile to find the right vantage point to be of any use, though. Got Skye out of a sticky situation and then…”

“Is she okay?” The words came out more plaintively than Phil had intended, and Clint finally turned his head to make eye contact, an understanding twist to the corner of his mouth.

“They’re safe, Phil. Whole team” He rose slowly from the bench, one hand lifting toward Phil’s arm, hovering a moment and then dropping back to his side. “The girls were a bit roughed up by that last exploding van, but they’re alive, and Trip was getting them clear. They’re _safe_.”

Relief made Phil close his eyes and just try to _breathe_ for a moment. “Thank you, Clint.” 

“‘Course. I… I wouldn’t let anything…” Clint trailed off awkwardly, and he was biting his lip and rubbing the back of his neck when Phil’s eyes opened.

“Really, Clint. Thank you.”

“Are _you_ okay, bay- Phil?” Clint shuffled his feet, looking down, glancing toward the doorway, out the windows, eyes never still, never settling on Phil’s face, but Phil knew he was being watched all the same.

It was a loaded question. _I’m drowning because you’re so near, and I can’t touch you. This is the first time I’ve felt almost whole since you walked out of my office, but there’s still a giant gap where you’re skin is supposed to be touching mine. I had no idea seeing you could hurt so much, because not seeing you has been the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I’m sorry, and I’m an asshole. I miss you. I need you. I love you. I’ll never be completely okay again unless you come here and…_ None of the words would come out, and Phil put a little more mental pressure behind them, trying to knock at least one phrase loose. Clint’s face scrunched a bit, closing down further, and Phil decided to back up and take a verbal running start.

“A little winded.” Phil shrugged, the movement awkward and stiff under his kevlar. “Might be getting a little old for the foot chase thing.” He cleared his throat, hoping to keep the gravel out of his voice.

“How are you doing, Clint?” Phil’s own shoes shuffled in the dirt that lay in drifts and dunes along the stone floor. 

“I’m…” His eyes finally rested on Phil’s face, and how _had_ they gotten so near to one another? And were Clint’s eyes always so… _that_? Or was it just distance and time and Phil’s desperate longing that made them glow so brightly?

“Clint, I…”

“Phil?” It was the roughest whisper. “Wha…”

That was it; the brokenness to Clint’s voice cracked through Phil’s resolve, and he leaned forward the last inch to stop Clint’s mouth with a kiss. Clint’s sentence ended in a breathy sigh that Phil swallowed, moving gently against the softness of Clint’s bottom lip. They stood for a moment, touching nowhere but the brush of their mouths, and then Clint gave a shouting groan that seemed to boil up from his boots, and Phil growled, half-angry, half-possessive, and they were both clawing at one another.

Phil heard the crackle of velcro as Clint’s hands dug into the edges of his vest, yanking their bodies hard together. He stumbled into the pull, leading with his hips, hands circling around to protect the skin of Clint’s back as they slammed roughly, Clint-first, into the wall. Clint gave a breathy gasp, leaving Phil room to reach with his tongue, brushing it along the achingly familiar ridges of Clint’s teeth. 

_Fuck! That taste!_

One of Phil’s hands walked away from the flexing, rippling, _amazing_ muscles of Clint’s shoulders, and Phil wanted to demand what the hell it thought it was doing. He sighed with relief when he realized that his hands had long ago learned what he liked, what Clint liked, what they both liked together, because that clever hand wiggled its way into Clint’s hair, tangling, gripping, and pulling just a bit, just enough to guide Clint’s head a fraction to the side. Phil jerked his mouth free of Clint’s lips and bit his way up the edge of Clint’s jaw, finding the spot just below Clint’s ear that made him moan and buck, pressing their bodies together harder. He did it again when a broad palm spread over his ass and gripped; better to bite than squeak.

Clint started panting as Phil shoved a leg forward, giving Clint’s hips something to flex against, something to grind and glide and roll into. His arm slid around that narrow, tight waist, not feeling when the roughness of the wall scraped off a bit more of his already-abraded skin. Really, who could be bothered with minor injuries, exploding missions, or thinking when it was easier to go back to the wet, sharp, desperate heat of Clint’s intoxicating mouth?

\----

As she raced up the stairs, Skye tried not to think about why AC wasn’t answering. The coms were spotty-- she and Trip and Jemma all together weren’t quite a match for Fitz’s dexterity when it came to impromptu electronics-- but they were working well _enough_. Well enough for May to have contacted them and let them know she was safe enough and bringing emergency evacuation their way. (What, precisely, that meant, Skye hesitated to guess.) 

“A friend” was how Skye’d explained the mysterious, disappearing guy in a smoking ninja suit, when Trip had asked, while they were both already elbow-deep in his backpack, pulling out anything they could use to jury-rig a receiver for the coms that would bypass whatever was jamming them. _Ward could never have done that_ she thought to herself as she watched him take apart the backplate of a small radio. (In answer to the question “why in the world do you have a radio in there?” he’d merely smiled and shrugged.)

Then they’d tried contacting AC-- several times-- using revolving frequencies, and nothing. 

“Well, Plan B, we split up and start looking,” he said, and stood up (and up, and oh those calves-- and Skye was just gonna keep blaming the gas, okay?)

“Because that’s gone quite well for us so far today,” Jemma replied, her voice still hoarse from the smoke, and Trip smiled back down at her.

“Unless you’re gonna tell me you’ve got a lo-jack on Coulson, I don’t know what else to tell you,” he said. “But I’m not leaving him behind.”

“Well, of course not,” Jemma snapped. “But you don’t go off _alone_.” She pushed herself up the wall, and Skye tried not to think of the dark streak she was leaving on the back of her shirt-- the little apartment they’d let themselves into while they worked had clearly not been cleaned in eons.

“You’re not in any shape to do anything but wait for May,” Trip was saying, but Skye’d stopped paying attention quite abruptly, and fumbled in her pocket.

She hit the call buttons on the cam and on her burner phone simultaneously, and waited.

No answer. But.

“Trip, give me your tablet,” she said, and pulled it towards her. “I have an idea.”

\-----

Yet again, Skye blessed the digital age, because apparently random half-nude archers on the tops of Basilica buildings were the kind of thing that hit Instagram quickly. The time check was a few minutes ago, but at least it meant that Ronin and AC might still be on the grounds. And AC would be lost, and looking for them, and Ronin appeared inordinately fond of heights….

Which meant that the stunningly obvious place to look would be the old stone tower fronting the Basilica. Sure, there was a distinct lack of traditional exits, but that had never seemed to mean much to Ronin, and AC was just as bad.

That was why she was racing up the stairs, not far enough for her peace of mind from a group of somewhat battered goons who appeared to have had the same idea. She’d thought she’d lost them, until she’d chanced to poke her head out a window at the third story and seen them converging on the tower. None of them had started up yet, but the little clot stood right in front of the door, and there was a passionate debate going on, involving a lot of gesticulations (including a truly globally-appropriate one that managed to combine at least three rude gestures).

_Probably trying to decide who stays down on the ground floor and who comes up to get their asses beaten._

Welp, if AC and Ronin _weren’t_ in the tower, she was completely screwed. She was nearly at the top, now; the windows had widened from arrow slits to nearly full-length portals with two white columns in the middle, and she could see the mass starting to split below.

_One more try_ she thought, and burst through the last door, already shouting for Coulson.

“AC, c’mon, we’re nearly out of time-- oh, shit!” 

Sometime later, when her brain had started working again, she was gonna be so damned mad at herself that she hadn’t gotten a picture of _this_. (Not half as mad as Jemma would be at her, though, when Jemma found out-- no. No, Jemma was _never_ going to find out.)

Ronin had found AC all right. And vice versa.

AC had him flattened against a wall in the dingy little tower-top room, and very, _very_ clearly had his tongue down Ronin’s throat. And his hands in Ronin’s hair, and Ronin’s flattened against his ass. AC had lost his jacket along the way, and they were both revealing too damn much musculature for her comfort. All their dishevelment from running and fighting-- not to mention building-climbing-- was getting further rumpled by the desperate way they were clutching at each other. She might have teased him a little about his past exploits, but Skye could honestly say she had never imagined AC could-- would-- have moves like _that_.

And she was going to stop finding it all very hot _right now_. 

It would forever please her that she managed to stammer “sorry to… um… sorry,” instead of “well that explains everything.”

_Look anywhere but at them. Anywhere… back away slowly. Oh_ Shit.

She had a clear view to the base of the tower from the window next to her. The general jumble of men _and really, you never see women in these generic goon squads, do you?_ had sorted itself out, and was sending a delegation inside.

No retreat now.

\----

“AC, c’mon, we’re nearly out of time-- oh, shit. Sorry to... um... sorry." Skye stepped back from the door, hand fluttering as if she meant to leave. A glance out the window seemed to decide her. “They’re coming up,” she said, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who she meant. "May's on her way, we've got to get out of here."

_Was a couple more minutes too much to ask?_

Phil untangled his mouth from Clint’s slowly, lingering on the wet softness of his lips. Clint was motionless beneath him, his breath ragged. He rolled his hips away, stepped back from where he’d smashed Clint into the wall, but it was more than he could possibly have been expected to do to disengage further than that. 

Skye had to be staring, and god knew what she thought of him. _There goes any semblance of a proper supervisor/subordinate relationship that we ever had_. There would be more than one awkward moment later, but as it stood, well, as _they_ stood, Clint was in his arms again at last, and he wasn’t ready to let go, even to run for his life. He turned to pull Clint with him, an arm around his waist, looking for an exit. 

Clint followed along for a half moment before freezing in place. Phil felt more than saw Skye freeze as well, confused. Phil closed his eyes for one slow blink, one moment of dread, just before Clint opened his mouth.

"Wait. No. Phil, no. No." Clint pushed his way violently out of Phil's arms, warding him off with both hands while backing around the bench. "No." 

_Well, of course. This is Clint; why did I let myself imagine for an instant this was going to be that simple?_

"Clint--" Phil reached out reflexively to pull Clint back and stopped when Clint backstepped to match his advance. Yes, more touching wasn't going to fix this now.

Skye glanced back out the window, then at the two of them. 

“Guys. Seriously. They’re in front of the entrance and I can hear them on the stairs. Let’s _go_.” She flapped at the window.

"Yeah, you guys get out of here, I can hold them off," Clint said, slinging his quiver back over his shoulder. 

Phil's "Not a chance," was reflexive. 

Clint winced, dropping from panicked to offended, and Phil shook his head and raised his hands. "You don't need to risk yourself, there's time. Come back with us," he said. _And give me a chance to do this properly._ He shot a glance at Skye, who was vibrating with impatience and glaring at them both. _And without an audience. Please._

"I’m not going with you. I can't, Phil. I can't go through this again," Clint was saying, and he was peeking at Skye, too. She went still and looked back at Phil, which was as much as he deserved. She'd seen the aftermath of Lima, what it had done to both of them.

"You _won't_ ," he said, and he directed it as much at Skye as at Clint. "Clint, I'm not mad. It's not... it's not _bad_." That stopped him, in the middle of slinging his bow over his other shoulder. Phil bit his lip and tried not to breathe, lest he frighten Clint off.

"No? What is this, bygones? You forgive me for being a nee--" another glance at Skye-- "an idiot? That what you're saying?"

"No I-- Clint. It wasn't your fault, not any of it. I was the one to blame." He might have said more, hell, he might have been on his _knees_ right now, but there was Skye, and even if he hadn't minded embarrassing himself entirely-- and if it kept Clint _here_ , he'd risk it-- embarrassing _Clint_ wasn't going to help his case.

"You were a goddamn jackass, Phil," Clint growled, clearly testing now, and Phil shrugged assent, because it was more than clear to him that his levels of jackass had reached epic proportions. 

"I was," he admitted. "I'm sorry."

Clint was silent a moment, just _looking_ at him, and Phil felt his heart begin to rise. Not far, mind, there weren't any flash flood risings on the immediate horizon for his insides, but it was there. 

"Thank you," Clint said at last, and his voice wasn't even gravelly, it was so far gone it was into boulder territory. "I... that's... thanks. But... it doesn't change things."

_Well that ray of hope was a bitch while it lasted._

"It doesn't?" Phil asked, and was startled to find that he was echoed by Skye. She shrugged as they both stared at her, and pointed from Clint to Phil.

"No, it doesn't. And that's... that's the _thing_ , Phil." He heaved a sigh and shut his eyes. "Even if it didn't end up like Lima again, it'd end up like Wichita."

"That's... a bad thing?" It _was_ , Clint wasn't wrong. Wichita had been... everything and nothing they needed. Fucking to avoid feelings, just like always. It just stunned Phil that Clint was so bitter about it.

"It is." Clint settled the bow on his shoulder, and looked over at the window. 

“Guys,” Skye whispered, her voice urgent. “Guys, yay talking, talking is good, I need a hanky here, but can we maybe do it later?”

"No. Sorry, Skye, there is no later,” Clint said, and he gave her an apologetic grimace, then spun back to Phil. "You were right," he said, and Phil had never in his life wanted _less_ to hear those words. "I got in too close, too needy-- I was so fucked up after everything that went down during New York, and you were dead, and then you were _alive_ and I didn't even realize how much I was clinging to you until... you were gone." He was moving now, backing towards the window again, and Phil abandoned all dignity and came after him-- slowly, to be sure, because he wasn't ready to take his life in his hands just yet.

"Clint--" he started, and bumped into Skye, who'd been trying to back out of their way. 

"I know, Phil," Clint said, and dropped his gaze to his boots rather than look at either of them. "You did that too. And it's all right... it's natural." His hands were waving now, held out as if he could just _give_ Phil his words, instead of having to speak. But he choked and kept going, and Phil... god help him his own mouth was stuck shut. Clint sighed. "It didn’t mean…. It didn’t mean what I wanted it to mean. It meant you needed my help, and I tried to shove all my mess at you along with it. God, we were both so fucked up." He was turning in circles now, hands scraping through his hair, looking anywhere but Phil and Phil wanted nothing more than to stop him, to grab him back. 

But Clint, even distracted as he was, was too used to evasive maneuvers, and he was using every one of them.

"Clint," he managed, and then that was all for a moment. "I lo--" The words wouldn't come out. Phil tried to force them past the blockage in his throat, then looked helplessly over at Skye, who was looking back at him with wide eyes. _Sorry, boss_ they seemed to say. He huffed a breath, swallowed hard, and tried again. "I can be better. We can try to fix it. Please." _One more chance, baby. Just one. For my sanity._ Which was such a selfish way to think of it. Clint was smiling at him now, and it was flat-out tragic. He always had been better than Phil at tossing away his pride, and Phil knew he'd left it too late and it was costing him... possibly everything.

“I'm sorry," Clint said, "maybe you could, but I can't. I'm sorry and I'm sorry and I wish I could, but what you want, we broke that, between us." He shook his head, still ruffled and red-lipped and panting with their kiss, and Phil wanted to cry. 

So that was that, really. His answer.

When he hadn't even gotten to ask the question.

Clint had stopped his pacing in front of the window, and he looked down, clearly considering the drop. _Right straight back out of my life._ As he thought it, Clint squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself, like he was about to step out into thin air-- except that for Clint, that part was always easy. He dipped his head to the side, shrugging those glorious shoulders up, and Phil had been wrong before. _This_ was Clint tossing away his pride.

"'Cause see, thing is, Phil?" he said, and Phil _knew_ that voice, from years and years of long missions, late nights, long sessions of deep-throating. "I've got the taste of it on my tongue. I've had a taste of having you be _mine_." Phil's heart stopped in his chest. Just right like that. That was clearly about to be _it_ for Phil, because it wasn't going to start again any time soon and so he might as well resign himself to being dead. 

"But I always _was_ ," he managed somehow, despite his not-living state. _I am._

Clint's face was doing something he'd never really seen on it before, some weird mixture of pity and impatience and something Phil was nearly certain was heartbreak. He knew heartbreak far too intimately to mistake it now.

"Not... like that, you weren't. Not just my best friend mentor partner guy who I fuck, but _my man,_ only _mine_. I got a taste of that and now I can't go back to not having all of you. I can't draw the boundaries back between us. I can’t share you, with _Portland_ or with anyone else, like that. Even if I could... I wouldn't want to. I deserve more than that. And you also-- you deserve not to be burdened with someone who needs you so much more than you need them. So, you see, I'm sorry I can't be what you need anymore. But it wouldn't be fair to either of us to pretend we can just be friends, or just friends-with-benefits. It would just blow up the way it did before."

"Yes, but--" _I love you._ It roared in Phil's head, lit it up like the Fourth of July, all the pots going and the 1812 Overture rolling the cannons, but _none_ of it came out. Phil might as well have been paralyzed still, or strapped to that table in the Guest House, for all the good his goddamn body was to him at that moment. 

But give him one half moment to recover, and he was damn well going to get there. 

"Boss, please," Skye whispered, and Clint blinked over at her. Phil felt himself start to unfreeze, remembering the oh-so-inconvenient goon squad clearing the rooms below them.

"Clint," he started.

“You have to get out of here, I know." Clint said. "I'm glad you're alive. It's so _good_ to see you, you don't even know. And goodbye. Safe travels. Keep on frying octopus. I’ll be out there doing whatever you have Skye tell me needs doing, and I won't bother you again-- for my sake if not yours. Get your ass out of here before the goons find you, Director."

Even as he said that, Clint had slung a leg over the windowsill. He was gone before Phil could stop him, out the window and off the roof as easy as if he did it every day. (Which, to be fair, he kind of did.) Back out of Phil's arms, his sight, his life. _Now_ Phil could move, and he flung himself at the window and looked out. Clint was already gone-- if he'd even bothered to use his own line, he'd gotten down it in record time.

It wasn't going to be Raina's goons who did him in after all, or HYDRA, or the mess TAHITI had made of his own damned head. Phil was going to die of irony.

“AC?” Skye said after a moment, and the look in her eyes was enough to tell him they’d run out of time. He grabbed her and flung them both out the window and down Clint's escape line to the lawn.

\----

Melinda steered around the crowd, glaring the few cops that had shown up away-- _HYDRA paying off local law enforcement already. We taught them too well._ \-- and using the weight of her own vehicle to shove barricades and parked cars aside. She saw the crowd at the base of the tower and figured that _had_ to be the place, so she downshifted for maximum engine growl and accelerated toward the goons. They scattered before she ran a single man over-- _and why_ were _there never any women in the goon squads, really?--_ and May hit the brakes just as Trip came flying from across the nearby street, Jemma on his back. Phil led the way around the base of the tower seconds later with Skye close on his heels. There was something about his face… Clearly, he’d finally realized he was wrong. Well, she _had_ told him.

Melinda leaned down to pull the handle, the door of the tour bus swinging open with a hydraulic-assisted hiss. 

“Need a ride? Free tour of the _giant mess you made_ in historic Ravenna, Italy, _Director_.”

Phil smiled tightly at her and herded the team up the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, in Recovery: Phil Makes Up His Mind, and Clint has an unexpected visitor


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unexpected Visitors

He’d lost track of time, staring blankly at a spot on the wall and _remembering_. Really, after so many years, so many encounters in so many places, all the moments where he and Clint had been tangled up together should start to blend. So how was it that Phil could almost count the years in the ways Clint unmade him, in the moments where they moved, even _breathed_ as one? How could Phil still differentiate between the time they’d both laughed from the first kiss to the final shudder of orgasm in the storage closet of a hospital in Palo Alto and the time Clint had sunk his teeth into Phil’s shoulder to muffle his sobs as they’d taken comfort in each other in another storage closet in another hospital after the fiasco in Rhodes? 

A zing of pain dragged Phil back into the present. He was pushing his hip so hard against the edge of his desk that he was sure it’d left a mark, and he rubbed his palm over the place, trying to get his head clear and fully into _now_. It'd been days since the perfect, terrible moment when Clint's arm had circled Phil's body, since every nerve had lit up from the power source that was Clint's mouth against his own. In the days since it happened, Phil had rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip so much that it was chapped to bleeding. 

“I've got the taste of it on my tongue. I've had a taste of having you be _mine_ , not just my best friend mentor partner guy who I fuck, but _my man,_ only mine, and I can't go back to not having all of you,” Clint had said, as Phil had… had all but chased him around the tiny room, trying to get him to stop, get him to _listen_. To shut Clint’s mouth with his own. 

Phil had been too stunned to just tackle Clint, pin him long enough say, “You _do_ have me, you blind twit!”

Groaning, Phil flung himself down in a chair, feeling like a marionette with no one holding his strings. 

“He… he loves me.” The words hissed out in a reverent whisper. “Clint loves me, and he wants me, and…”

And then he thought of what else Clint had said. 

_We broke that… between us._

No. No, _Phil_ had broken it. Phil had been the one to throw accusations like stones, aiming for the tender places in Clint’s heart, his mind, his insecurities. Phil was the one who heard Clint saying “I love you” with every action-- cleaning the shower for their one stolen weekend, giving him the precious two-way camera that Phil had thrown at his head, racing to Phil’s side before Phil was taken, arriving like an avenging angel in a ninja mask when Phil was in danger in Lima-- and had never responded in kind. 

So, if that was Clint’s final decision, if that was what Clint wanted, for it to be over, to stay broken, then Phil would have to respect that. But the way Clint had kissed, had clutched at Phil’s vest, fingers digging under the edge of the Kevlar hard enough to leave a trail of tiny purple circles that still decorated skin, the way he had panted against Phil’s mouth as he’d reeled him in…

“I can't go back to not having all of you,” he’d said. “I can’t share you. It wouldn't be fair to either of us to pretend we can just be friends, or just friends-with-benefits.”

And, no, no they couldn’t. _Phil_ couldn’t. Couldn’t share. Couldn’t give half of his attention. Couldn’t accept half-measures in return. 

Phil shoved himself out of the chair and began tearing through the document box on the corner of his desk. Papers, notes, random bobs and bits were flung across the blotter, scattering to the floor like giant flakes of confetti. Phil turned to the safe next, throwing envelopes over his shoulder after glancing at the addresses or notations scrawled on the front. Still not finding his target, he slammed his way across the office to the hidden drawer, pressing his finger to the lock and snatching the handful of letters hidden away inside. He thumbed through them swiftly, letting them sprinkle through his fingers when he realized none of them were the one letter he _needed_ to find. 

_Where the_ HELL _did I leave that thing?_

Cushions were dragged off of chairs, and Phil went so far as to unfold his bed from the couch, ripping loose the sheets and shaking free the pillows. Still no envelope appeared, no paper covered with Phil’s handwriting and the figurative blood of his still-broken heart. Sucking in a deep breath, Phil started in on the filing cabinet.

___

Disgruntled muttering and the leaflike rattle of papers carried easily out the open door of AC’s office, and Skye paused, wondering if she should knock or simply barge in. 

“Shit fuck goddamned piece of worthless fucking paper!” 

Okay, so AC had lost the Coulson Cool and had gone onto less-than-creative swearing. Maybe she should come back later. Maybe she should get Agent May and find out if AC had gone fully glue-eating, Alice’s hatter friend, bat guano insane. She was just turning away, still not sure where she’d go, when she heard Phil speak again.

“Goddamit, babe.” There was something so tired, so beaten about the words, spoken through a heavy sigh, that Skye _knew_ who he was talking about. She twisted up her courage and poked her head around the door.

“Hey, AC…” She trailed off as his head whipped around from where he knelt on the floor beside his desk, hair standing on end, eyes wild. The office was trashed; everything that wasn’t glued down (which, granted, wasn’t _that_ much), had been overturned, dropped on the floor, or tossed aside. “Wow. Uh, hey. Spring cleaning?”

AC blinked slowly at her once, turned his head to survey the chaos, and then blushed a brilliant scarlet. 

“I… lost something?”

Skye bit her lip to keep from snarking “Your damn mind?” It didn’t seem like sniping would be appreciated. She edged into the room, scooping up a handful of papers on her way toward where he knelt, a heap of files in front of him. Still flushed, he held his hand out for the stack and then looked down at them, bumping the edges together, taking far too much time to get them perfect.

“So… about… Clint…” Skye began and then fought off the urge to facepalm. Not how she’d envisioned starting the conversation. 

“Yes, it’s ab…” He blinked hard, looking for all the world like he was trying to push his own reset and it was one of those fiddly little buttons that no pen tip actually fit into. “I mean, what about Clint?” AC’s blush deepened from red to nearly purple, and Skye wondered if she should go get Jemma to check his heart, his blood pressure. Something. _That_ couldn’t be healthy.

"So you and he are, liiiike..." Skye kicked a space clear on the floor and sat down. One knee nearly bumped AC's as she folded her legs and began sorting through the debris. He didn't answer for a long moment, and she glanced over to see AC folding a wide purple ribbon, a soft, secret smile on his lips. It was a good look on him. Her worry about eminent heart attacks or fatal brain aneurysms dialed back a notch.

His smile turned sardonic as he stood up and walked across the room to put the ribbon and a stack of papers in a narrow drawer that poked out a corner where she'd never seen a drawer before. He closed it tenderly and then looked back toward her, sheepish. 

"He and I _were_ like." He shrugged, looking down like a teenager who got caught making out in the driveway. "Long time."

He walked back to her, sinking back to the floor gracefully to grab a handful of paper to sort.

 _Funny. It didn’t look like_ were _up in that tower, AC_. She was proud of herself for thinking it without the words popping straight out of her mouth.

Skye gestured around the room, indicating the mess. "So... nasty breakup. That was pretty…"

"What?" He looked up, surprised. "No! I mean, yes, but this was... I lost something. Got carried away looking for it."

"Why didn't you tell me who he was?" Skye couldn't keep the accusation, the hurt out of her voice. "When I asked if I could trust him. It would've been... I mean, he’s _Hawkeye_. He’s an _Avenger_. He was your boyfriend."

AC heaved a sigh that seemed to start at his toes. He studied his hands, lost in thought, and then nodded crisply.

"Stay put a second." He swiftly left the office, and she listened to his polished shoes thumping down the stairs below. 

Slipping her phone out of her pocket, she glanced at the time, determined to give him five minutes before she chased him down to berate him for running away. He was back in four, carrying a bottle and two glasses from the bar. Settling down beside her, he poured them each a couple of fingers of scotch and then scooped up a couple of nicknacks from the jumble, setting them on the edge of a low table. 

"I was his SO," he began without preamble. "Not for long, because he came to us almost fully trained." He held up a hand when Skye took a breath to ask the obvious question. "Sorry, everything before is his to tell or not tell. Don't even ask."

A couple more pages were collected and sorted into stacks, and Skye started a pile of her own to help. Least she could do when she was finally getting the man to _talk_.

"His clearance matched mine very quickly, and we became partners." A glance showed his face go through a swift transformation from wry to hurt to hopeless and back again. She stopped her hand before it reached out to squish the wrinkle between his brows, turning the gesture into grabbing another page from the floor. "Partners in the field, I mean. A team. And friends. Equals. He kept calling me 'boss' long after it'd quit being the case, but I think he meant it as a term of endearment. Or he just liked being obnoxious. That is also _well_ within the realm of probable."

"But you did get together?" Skye wasn't sure how long she could contain her impatience. _Get to the juicy parts, AC_

"We did. And I never really understood how. Couldn’t figure out what he was doing with..." He was blushing again, not meeting her eyes. "Well, you've seen him! And then there's _him_ , the man behind the muscles and the smile." AC shook his head, smiling grimly. "He's been my best friend for years, just because of who he is. He's a good man, Skye. The best of men. And I couldn’t even _tell_ anyone about it. At least he could tell Natasha. For me... there was one time when Fury found out and... " He sucked in a deep breath, looking pained. “After that, I had to keep it quiet. Never tell anyone that I had the most incredible human being alive in my life. That…” Another deep breath. “That I was in love.” 

His expression softened, gaze unfocused and far away, clearly staring into a pretty pair of bright blues in another time and place. And, well, she'd seen those eyes for herself, so she couldn't exactly fault AC for his distraction. But, with all the confessions, there was one thing digging at her. 

She knew it was mean to interrupt, but she did it anyway. Clint’s bitterness over the two-way camera, when he’d heard about Phil going to chase Daniels, suddenly made so much more sense. 

"So what the hell was Portland?"

AC's mouth twisted up, the self-deprecation she had long-since learned to hate.

"Right?" He grabbed the bottle and filled his glass again, tossing back half it before starting on another section of his mess. "Clint and I were never... It wasn't… We didn’t even try to be exclusive. Too much time apart, too many miles between missions." He took a deep breath. "I thought I wanted something a little bit normal. Something that wasn't focused on this job. It's eaten my entire adult life, and sometimes Clint was just one more thing it swallowed."

Skye sifted through a file, considering. Yeah, decades of SHIELD could do that. She bobbed her head and then shifted, intentionally bumping her shoulder against his. He smiled at her, and then sighed again. He was going to deflate his lungs if he kept that up, and oh yeah, shouldn’t say that out loud, what with the him having been stabbed in the chest and all.

“One other thing. You are now one of, as far as I know, only three people who know Clint Barton’s secret, _secret_ identity. And it goes no further. Not _ever_. If you _ever_ speak of it to _anyone_ , I will know, and I will take steps.”

“How would you know it wasn’t one of the other people?” She tipped her head, trying to guess who else might be in on it. Was this like some SHIELD Level Eight Thousand thing? 

“Because I’m one of them, and the other would betray many people in many ways, but never _him_ in that one.” The menace that she’d first felt rolling off of him when he’d opened her van door with that creepy-pleasant little half-smile washed over her again. “I would _know_ , Skye. And I will never let _anyone_ endanger him that way. Never.”

“Oh-kay, AC.” She shook her head slightly, trying to dispel the uncomfortable sense of being watched that tiptoed down her back. “Ninja identity stashed forever.”

He shot her a suspicious look, and then his shoulders softened and he laughed. “That was a bit dramatic, wasn’t it.”

“Only a little. It was kinda cute, though.” He flushed and laughed again.

They worked their way across the floor, clearing up the mess from whatever emotional trauma he’d inflicted on his office.

“Can I ask you about…” She hesitated. “About Wichita.”

His ears went pink, and Skye stifled a giggle.

“What about Wichita?” He cleared his throat and tidied the papers in another file with way too much precision. “I mean, there are parts of that op I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

She stopped cleaning and watched him for a moment until he shuffled uncomfortably and the flush spread across his cheeks, swallowing his freckles. 

“It was like that, then.” 

“Like what?” He was starting to get defensive. Good. 

“You let us all go off on a wild goose chase so you could have some _alone time_ with your man.” She didn’t mean for it to come out so sulky. But, come _on_. Not very subtle, AC, and not very _fair_.

“No!” His head snapped up. “I let _Clint_ send you off on a wild goose chase so I could find out why he’d put a camera _in my office_ and didn’t bother to tell me about it. And so I could… so we could…” He bit his lip, eyes going soft again. “I needed him, Skye. But he wasn’t supposed to know I was alive, so, technically, his camera could have gotten him arrested. By SHIELD. But I needed him.” He looked away, hunching his shoulders, looking suddenly ancient and sad and weighted down. “Still do.”

"So what are you going to do now?" She smiled at him, and it felt small in the face of his sadness. She forcibly turned up the wattage. "From where I was standing in that tower, it looked like there was still something there? And I’m not even talking about the, er, what you were doing when I walked in. I mean the way you _looked_ at each other. The way he was talking."

She bit her lip and watched as AC closed his eyes. He was clearly picturing the scene as she’d first seen it. The way they’d both been clawing at each other, like they couldn’t get close enough. As if skin to skin was too far apart. 

“I'm glad you're alive. It's so _good_ to see you, you don't even know,” Clint had said. But his eyes had been screaming “I love you” and “I miss you” and “Come back.” 

"There was a letter," AC waved at the debris scattered around the room. "It said... Well, I wrote it all down. I was going to send it now. Give him time to hear me, to consider..."

"You want him back." She meant it to be a question, but she was just so tired of his eggshell smiles and the cracks with their patches that blocked out his light. And, okay, so AC in his buttoned-up suits with his lame, dad jokes didn’t seem like he’d go for some hotshot superhero. But… there was the other part of Coulson. The steady eyes and the warmth and the kindness. He was… steadfast or something. And, yeah, it felt like family to her. Clint didn’t really _like_ family, so maybe, to him, AC just felt like home. She could see how someone like Clint, someone who seemed to rush from explosion to adventure to _saving her ass_ might really go for that.

For a minute, she thought he wasn't going to answer. She worried that maybe she'd pushed him too hard and Caring and Sharing Time was over, but then he heaved another of those toe-sighs and smiled at her. That smile was crooked but real, and his eyes were soft and maybe a bit damp above the rim of his glass.

"I need him back." He took a swallow of his scotch. "I miss him. So much. And, more than that, I need someone who knows me. Here. To watch me. Someone who can keep me from..."

He trailed off and shivered, and she finished his sentence.

"Who can keep you from turning into Garrett." 

He looked up, surprised, alcohol or thoughts of Ronin making him incapable of tucking away the hurt that flashed into life and instantly burned away from his face. As if he hadn’t realized that she would consider that. As if it hadn’t occurred to him that she would be worrying about the same thing for herself.

"You won't, AC," she told him. She reached far across the gap between them and grabbed his wrist. "You _won't._ You're not like him. Not before the… the whatever alien goo stuff. And not since. You’re… you’re good. You’ll..." _keep me safe._ She swallowed back the words, refusing to let them fall out. 

He was not like Garrett. And neither was she. But… even Garrett hadn’t been like Garrett. Not like he was at the end, anyway. When he’d carved those freaky symbols into the glass. When he’d sent AC flying with one punch. When he’d gone bat-shit, glue-eating, mad as a hatter nuts and _ripped a rib out of a general._ AC could never be that. And Skye? She wouldn’t either. Didn’t matter what anyone said. She _couldn’t_ be like that. AC wouldn’t allow her to be.

 _Their little monster_. Raina’s words still echoed through Skye’s head, and she shivered. AC wouldn’t become _that_. Of course not. But… what about Skye? He’d protect her, too, right? He wouldn’t let _her_ turn into Garrett, either. Right?

He shrugged once, pulled his arm free, and emptied his glass in one gulp, coughing slightly at the too-large mouthful. She let the sound and movement distract her, pull her back into the office with Phil and his mess and his brittle face.

"Not sure it matters, though." He picked up the bottle but didn't uncap it, rolling it gently between his palms. "I was an ass. Cruel. Hateful. Said things I shouldn't have. Might have gone too far for him to forgive me."

Skye thought of Ronin's face on the cam the first time she'd seen it, battered and swollen, exhausted by emotion more than by the fight he'd clearly survived. She replayed the desperation she'd heard in his voice before he'd leapt from the tower in Ravenna. She tried to keep herself from picturing the scene she'd walked in on, the breathless panting, the hungry hands, devouring mouths, but it was a difficult image to erase. 

"I don't think that's going to be a problem," she said dryly, and he huffed a laugh, small and damp but genuine, as if he knew exactly what she'd been thinking. "You should just call him right now. I'll leave you alone to do it and everything. Just... just tell him the truth."

"What truth do I tell him?" AC loosened his tie further, shoving papers aside to stretch his legs out in front of him and sinking back onto his elbows. "That I hadn’t realized how much of an ass I was? That I miss him? That I feel like I’m missing a limb without him? That I..." He stopped and took a deep breath. When he continued, his voice was so much smaller, vibrating like a newborn bird, as if this was the very birth of the words. "That I love him?"

"Yes." She reached over to sock him in the arm. "Come on, AC. Suck it up and go get you your _man_."

He tipped his head back to laugh, relief, humor, and something new washing over his face, running down his body. Skye tracked the progress of the emotion in the lessening of the lines on his forehead, the deepening of the crinkles around his eyes, the loosening of his shoulders as he relaxed.

"Can I have a few to get used to the idea first?"

"Nope." She pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. "Don't want you chickening out again." And then, because seeing him so loose and almost-happy made her giddy, she clucked at him. "Bok bok bok..."

“Skye…” Phil smiled again, gentle and more fragile than before. “He’s got to have time to get home first, okay. If I know Clint, he’s still spooked, and it’ll be better if I call him when he’s on his own turf, with his… _friends_ nearby.” He laughed at her skeptical look. “Yes, Skye. I’m going to contact him. I _promise_.” 

\----

Rain poured over the rooftops of Bed-Stuy like it was determined to wash everything on the street straight down into the river. Clint arrived home bedraggled, exhausted, and chilled to the bone. The journey had been long, and involved too many changes of transportation. (Train to plane, to another plane, to motorbike, to banana boat very briefly (just to confuse any pursuers) back to plane-- this one a little prop flying a route over the border that no one was supposed to know about-- to another commercial flight stuck back in economy with one seatmate who snored and another who spent the entire flight eating sour apple jolly ranchers and getting sticky marks over their shared seat. Then back to taxi for the trip in from LaGuardia.)

Lucky met him at the door, grumbling amidst his pleased head-rubs and smelling faintly of wet dog. 

“Miss me? Who walked you, Kate, or one of the kids?” Clint asked, and buried his fingers in damp scruff for a moment before they both stumbled upstairs.

He fell over into bed a very short time later, closed his eyes, and tried to let himself sink into the cool familiar mattress in the blue dark of the room. 

Sleep was teasing him. He’d be nearly there, dropping even, only to have lightning flash outside the window or Lucky rumble next to him, a huge doggy sigh expanding and contracting his ribcage under Clint’s hands. He settled himself once more, tried to clear his mind, imagined himself drawing, nocking, tensing, releasing, again and again. Counting arrows in his head. Slowly he sank, and his mental defenses dropped. 

That was when the memory ambushed him.  
___

Clint had opened the door of some sterile hotel room in some forgotten city-- maybe it’d been Milan, or it could have been Tallahassee; they all blended together after a solid decade-- to find a very wet, very bedraggled Phil standing in the hall. Phil had pushed his way into the door, shaking and silent while Clint peeled him out of his clothing, wrapping his shoulders in a towel and pressing him into the bed, curling around him until the shaking had died down enough for Phil to form words.

“Three down today, Clint. I couldn’t get there in time.”

And Clint had offered all the comfort he could, but words weren’t cutting it, so he tucked himself in closer and tried to _touch_ his consolation into Phil’s skin.

“Should’ve gotten there faster.” Phil kept repeating it like a goddamned broken-hearted broken record, and Clint had finally just kissed him to shut him up. When he was certain the mantra was well and truly stopped, Clint asked what Phil needed from him.

“Just need to stop feeling,” Phil’s voice had been a whisper against Clint’s lips. “Please help me stop, just for a little while.”

Clint bit his lip. This was… this was the strange mix of casual and intimate that ops gone wrong bred. This was Clint going open-eyed into a quagmire of his own devising. This was more than blowing off steam. This was more than wanting, more than friendship and hard dicks. This was Phil needing, and Clint knew Phil had earned the right to take.

Phil had been dry-eyed, dead-voiced when he repeated his request. “Please just turn my head off.”

“I got you, ‘kay? You’re with me. Just… just be here for now.”

They’d held each other, Phil trying to kiss away his own memories of violence and Clint half-mad with worry as he tried to pet him, gentle away the trembling. Phil pulled away with a broken sob. 

“In me, Clint.” 

The memory of those three roughly whispered words still had the power to send a bolt of heat through Clint’s body.

Phil had been loose and pliant under Clint’s hands, sighing and letting his head loll against the pillows. Beautiful, even with the dark circles under his eyes. Still so strong and solid while breaking down completely. Breathtaking and heartbreaking and… so very Phil. Everything Clint wanted, everything he could ever dream about, demanding and desperate and, in that moment, entirely _Clint’s_. Clint had a sudden attack of nerves when he discovered the lube that lived in his go-bag was nearly empty. 

But Phil had just given that one shouldered shrug and said, “I don’t give a fuck, Clint. Want to feel it.”

Clint finally got things started, but they were both barely more than half-hard, and he was ready to spend some time working Phil over, get them both into it. Not that it would have taken _Clint_ long; finally having Phil spread out, desperate and begging. Okay, more _commanding_ than begging. Still, Phil’s gorgeous body was there, and his eyes were dark, and he was hot and welcoming against Clint’s fingers.

“Get on with it,” Phil had snapped. “Not looking for gentle right now, Barton.”

And Clint had cringed, but he’d reached for the condom. He wanted to take things slowly, afraid of actually _hurting_ Phil, but Phil just kept pushing.

“Now, Clint.”

The next half-hour was seared in Clint’s memory. And, if he took it out sometimes over the next decade, remembered and imagined and lost himself in it, well, no one could really _blame_ him.

Phil took a deep breath and screwed his eyes tightly shut as Clint lined up. 

“Babe?” Clint reached up, gently stroking Phil’s cheek. “Hey, this isn’t gonna work like that.” Smiling gently at the scowl he received from Phil, Clint leaned forward and pressed his lips to Phil’s, ignoring the invitation as Phil’s lips parted under his. His lips moved on as he stretched out along the furry chest beneath him, pressing his tongue to the pulsepoint below Phil’s ear.

“This is not what I want.” Phil sounded sulky, but his breath caught as Clint nipped along his neck. “I would like to get on with this. Now.”

“Hey, whoa whoa whoa!” Clint pushed himself up to one elbow. “‘M not nineteen anymore. Can’t just get it up on command. Although you make me feel like it.” Another gentle press of lips to Phil’s collarbone. “Can’t get enough of your skin. Always wanting to get off with you. Fucking think about it at the most inconvenient times.”

There was a slight thawing to the stiff body underneath him, and Clint felt a hand come up to stroke his lower back. He kept talking, mouth rattling on while his brain catalogued every inch of Phil’s skin, checking for injuries and, thankfully, coming up empty.

“Hear you barking orders on comms, even when they’re not aimed at me.” Clint rubbed his face against the soft, thick hair covering Phil’s chest. “End up sitting crooked in my nest for the next thirty minutes.”

“Maybe we should get you some desensitization training on that.” Phil shifted restlessly and then settled again as Clint’s tongue found his nipple. “See if we can’t make your job a little… less _hard_.”

“Too late for that, sir.” Clint nosed down the ridges of Phil’s ribs, biting small, pink marks every few inches. “Think this is one response I’m just gonna have to learn to work around.”

“Has it…” Phil sounded breathless, and Clint smiled against the point of his hip, loosening his teeth. “Has it interfered with your performance in the field?”

“No, sir.” Clint nuzzled his way through the coarse curls at the base of Phil’s now-proud cock. “And it’s enhanced my performance _out_ of the field, I think. You’ll have to ask my former SO to rate my performance.”

“Mmm,” Phil writhed as Clint licked his way up Phil’s shaft. “I believe I have seen certain… _oh god_ … advances… advancements… _fuck!_ Clint!” He panted and twisted while Clint worked him with his mouth, finally pushing him away with a growl of “Get _on_ with it! Fuck!”

Clint surged up Phil’s body to latch his teeth onto Phil’s neck, earning him a sharp shout of pleasured surprise and Phull-contact Phil arching off the bed under him.

“I believe that’s the idea, babe,” Clint’s voice was a growl as he reached down to steady himself with one hand, and then he pressed forward, slowly but steadily, not stopping.

Phil’s breath was sobbing in his throat, short, damp puffs against Clint’s temple as Clint bottomed out and forced himself to hold still. 

“Babe? You okay?” Clint was trembling now, as turned on by the welcoming heat, the perfect tightness of Phil’s body as he was by the little bit of playing he’d done on the outside of Phil’s skin. He knew Phil didn’t bottom much-- never had before for Clint-- and he wasn’t sure how overwhelmed Phil would be.

“Won’t be if this is all I get,” Phil panted back. He writhed, and Clint whimpered at the way Phil tightened and released with every movement. “I told you I wanted you to fuck me.”

Clint understood Phil’s need to have his brain turned off. He knew how vital it was sometimes to stop seeing images haunting the inside of his eyelids, even if just for a little while. He pressed his face to Phil’s neck, drew his hips back as he slid both hands underneath, gripping Phil’s shoulders for leverage before slamming home. Phil arched again, letting out what certainly qualified as a shriek. Clint repeated the gesture, trying to put more force behind his hips.

“Y… yuh-hesssssss!” Phil’s breath was a sharp hiss of satisfaction, and his thighs circled Clint’s hips, hands digging into Clint’s shoulders. “You’re right _there_ , Clint! _You’re right there!_ ”

Clint clutched Phil tighter, starting a hard grind that had them both groaning in seconds.

Phil babbled in his ear, something about the feeling and Clint “feeling huge” and “the perfect hurt,” but Clint didn’t register all of it. Any of it. Mostly he just held on, trying to be a solid place for Phil without losing himself in the heat and perfection of their motions. It didn’t work; the pleasure of Phil, of _pleasuring Phil_ ate into his resolve, turning him hot, needy, desperate. Clint lifted his head, pushed with his feet to fold Phil a little more tightly, and stretched up for a kiss. 

“T… Touch me?” Phil was no longer screaming, just begging, eyes huge and dark in the light of the bedside lamp. Clint kissed him again and shifted to slide a hand between their bodies. “OhgodClint…”

Clint closed his eyes as he covered Phil’s mouth again, not kissing so much as sharing space, breathing the same air. He deepened the roll of his hips, shifting his angle. He could hit any target.

Phil’s body tightened around him as his orgasm wracked his body, and Clint bit off a tiny yell as he dropped into his own pleasure. Phil was genuinely sobbing as Clint found his way back into his own head. 

“Shhhhh, babe,” Clint whispered again, drawing out and away and stripping the condom on autopilot. Knot the end. Throw it toward trash. “Come here to me.”

Ignoring the mess that would surely have them glued together by morning, Clint dragged Phil into his arms and under the covers. 

“Just sleep, babe.” He pressed another kiss into thinning, dark hair. “I’ll be right here in the morning, and we can fuck it out again.”

Minutes later, a shaky sigh was the last sound Phil made before going limp and warm, asleep in Clint’s embrace. Clint had lain awake all night, knowing something had changed between the two of them, something more than the position, but uncertain what it would be, what it would mean for them. It took him ten years, a death, a rediscovery, and a fight that let to him shouting at the man and walking out on him for Clint to figure it out:

That was the night Phil had first _needed_ Clint. And that was night Clint had fallen in love.

\----

Clint came back to the present slightly hard, with a hollow space in the middle of his chest where certain vital organs used to be.

It was one thing to make bold statements in the heat, the aftermath of action. One thing to take the principled, mature stand when adrenaline was still up and his heart was thumping in his chest. It was entirely another, now that he was finally home, to realize that every night from now on was going to be so empty, so endless, without Phil in his life. 

Sleet sloshed against his insides at the thought. Maybe he should have stayed. Should have found out what Phil meant by "I can be better." A better friend? A better lover? He was already about as good at both of those as anyone could get-- Lima excepted. If he wanted what they'd had before that back, it might be enough to ease the ache. And maybe, someday, if Clint was _very_ good, very lucky… Phil had seemed, before the Bridge and Lima fucked it all up, like he might be coming closer. Maybe eventually Phil could come to love him, too? 

Skye hadn’t mentioned anything about Audrey, so maybe she wasn’t back in the picture after all. It might not be so bad; Phil had always been kind. Other people lived entire lives like that, one of them loving so much more than the other. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Lucky sighed again, and mumbled in his sleep, and Clint closed his eyes and laughed. Here he went being maudlin again. No, he couldn’t live life like that, and it wasn’t fair to Phil. So it hurt now; broken things always did. He’d had enough to know. Theoretically he’d recover. Maybe even go on and love someone else-- although that would have to wait for long in the future, because it was impossible to conceive of, just at the moment. Still, unlikely as it seemed from this distance, there had been a life before Phil, and there would be a life after. It was better to mourn the loss of the relationship, to rebuild himself, than it was during the period he was mourning the man himself. Not easier, not when temptation still existed in the universe, in the form of a suited, passionate, smartass man who’d tried to clutch him so hard, not so very long ago. 

But Clint knew his reasons hadn’t changed; he couldn’t go through every day knowing he loved that man better than life, and was regarded with only fondness and lust in return. It was so fucking unfair he wanted to cry.

_No one ever said life is fair, Agent._

Indeed. Clint turned on his side and buried his face in Lucky’s haunch. Eventually, exhaustion and the rain and the warm dog did their job, and he drifted away.  
\----

Lucky left his bed in the early hours of the morning. Clint woke to see a fuzzy rear end disappearing over the side of the bed, then the thumps of a dog tripping down the stairs.

“‘Kay,” Clint muttered, and figured he ought to be digging down deeper into his comforter. Instead, he lay frozen, awake and wondering why, until Lucky’s nails clicked on the floor, coming back up. Lucky padded to the bed, then looked up, eye luminous in the near dark. He whined, and looked back over his shoulder at the stairs.

Clint felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck, and slid out of bed and into his slippers.

“All right, Luck, show me,” he breathed, and Lucky promptly turned tail. He followed the dog down the stairs and to the door, certain he looked as foolish as he felt. Certain, at least, until he got to the front door. Everything was still in the night, Lucky on one side staring fixedly at the knob. Nothing on the other but shadow. Just when Clint was certain he was hallucinating the shadow, the certainty that _something_ was on the other side of the door, it moved.

Clint had his go-bag in his hand and was headed for the window before his mind caught up with what he was doing.

“Fuck you, Agent Barton, don’t you dare go out that window. Let me in.”

Clint froze.

“Sir?” he asked, turning. 

Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t know that Director Nicholas Fury of SHIELD (formerly of SHIELD) was alive. Fury was not one of those people who other people pretended to be, for any reason whatsoever, not even to beard ex-SHIELD archers in their own dens at 3 AM. He opened the door.

Nick Fury swept in, looking like some kind of out-of-time beatnick in his cap and sunglasses. Clint debated, and decided not to offer him cheap coffee, a cigarette, and a set of bongos. 

“What brings you to my humble abode?” he asked, and was rewarded with what he was fairly sure was a glare.

“Can it, Barton. Coulson’s alive.” He said it all in a waspish tone of voice, and Clint could appreciate the attempt at normalcy. Wasn’t a hell of a lot he felt like saying about it, though, and anyway he was concentrating on staying upright, so he just nodded. Fury paused, clearly waiting for Clint to process some more.

“And he’s the new Director of SHIELD,” Fury said, when it became clear Clint wasn’t gonna unseal his lips.

Clint nodded again. This time, Fury’s reaction ran to pursed lips and a can-you-believe-this-guy headshake.

“And he’s going to need your help,” he said. Clint fought back a laugh, and a sob, and any number of other really inappropriate reactions, in favor of a curious head-tilt. Apparently, that drove Fury over the edge of patience.

“Damnit, Barton, I know perfectly well you already knew he’s alive. You can start having an actual reaction any time now.” He crossed his arms in front of him, rucking up the leather of his coat-- and at least that hadn’t changed entirely. Clint could no more imagine Fury in, say, a windbreaker, than he could imagine him not Director of SHIELD.

Which, well. That was the thought that did it; Clint felt his face begin to move. He was curious where it was going to go, and not entirely unsurprised to find it had resolved itself into a grin. Not… a very _nice_ grin, but a grin.

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, sir. But it wasn’t a very nice thing to _do_ to that nice guy.”

Fury laughed at that, and took himself over to Clint’s couch, where he flopped down and spread his arms along the back.

“Got a beer for your old boss, Clint?” he asked, and Clint stopped to look closely at him, trying to blink himself into full alertness. It was unfair just how much younger Fury looked, lighter, looser, funkier. It was especially unfair when Clint had already seen just a hint of that weight settling down around Phil’s shoulders. Resenting Fury for it would have been pointless; whatever his reasons, Phil had accepted the responsibility. (Like he’d ever _not_ have, even if Skye had said he was starting to realize the full extent to which he was screwed.) 

“If I had any, it’d be yours. Been trying to cut down lately.” _Since I nearly drank myself into a stupor after Lima_ remained unsaid. “Coffee?”

Coffee was deemed acceptable, and Clint started it, setting his back to Fury quietly.

“It wasn’t a nice thing of me to do,” Fury said, while Clint measured grounds into the filter basket. “But it was a necessary thing. He’s practically the only high-level agent left, and nobody is gonna follow an outsider or someone who hasn’t been in command forever-- no matter how personable they are.”

“Hill?”

“Don’t be a damned idiot, we need her in Washington, and working with Stark. It was convenient, Cybertek and Garrett threatening generals. We may get our agents off the terrorist watch-list one of these days, but that doesn’t make us legitimate again. We need Hill in that chamber answering questions.”

“More power to her. But eventually someone’s gonna want him in that chamber answering questions, if SHIELD’s ever gonna be legit again,” Clint said as he handed over a mug of coffee. “And the last thing we want is Phil Coulson let loose in a Senate chamber or a boardroom when he thinks he could be off doing something more useful.”

They both paused as that mental image made its way through their heads, Phil smiling there pleasant as a crocodile while chaos erupted around him. Tony Stark had been bad enough, but he was _supposed_ to be over-the-top. Phil, well. Phil bored and aggravated and sitting in front of a panel of people was the reason why SHIELD’s meetings rarely lasted past an hour. He got snarky. Or he had. Maybe death had changed that, like so much else.

Fury’s hands curled around his mug, and he shrugged.

“Problems for another day. His to handle, which I have every confidence he can do. And maybe he should have someone with him who knows how to keep him relaxed, huh?” Fury leaned forward. 

“Skye’ll do that just fine,” Clint said, and sipped from the carafe, largely because it was obnoxious and he felt like being a jerk. 

“Huh.” Fury sat back. “You really don’t give a fuck what I do or don’t know about your little side project anymore, do you? Didn’t I tell you to trust no one? Doesn’t that include me?”

“Well, _Nick_.” Clint sat down. “Way I figure it, you’re not really in a position to question my decisions. If you’d wanted me to help keep Phil relaxed all this time, you coulda told me he was alive anytime between when it happened and now.”

Behind his sunglasses, Clint was nearly sure Fury was side-eying him. And since he was fairly certain he’d kept most of the whine out of his voice, it made him feel somewhat defensive. He bit the inside of his lip to keep from doing something embarrassing like shouting at the man before him.

“Clint,” Fury said after a while, then sighed and set his coffee down on the low table. “I don’t trust a lot of people completely. Can count them on one hand.”

“Is this the whole chopping off fingers speech? Because, all due respect, that was always kind of creepy.” 

The last thing Clint expected at that moment was for Fury to toss his head back and laugh. Lucky leapt up from his spot curled under the coffee table, and banged his head.

“Goddamnit, Barton. D’you know how damn much I’ve missed that? Yes, it’s the creepy-ass cutting off fingers speech. How do you think, given how few of you I’ve got, how much do you think I wanted to just accidentally-on-purpose send Loki to the Slingshot after he cut off not one but _two_ of you at once?”

Clint sat down hard.

“I’m not-- ”

“Don’t be a bigger asshole than you need to be, Clint. Yeah, you.”

“Why me? I get Nat, I get Phil-- is it because of them? I mean--” he flapped his hand when Fury looked confused, as if a random set of hand gestures would somehow get his point across. “You trust them. Is it because they trusted me?”

Sunglasses instead of an eyepatch had not dimmed Fury’s ability to bore straight into him with one glance, somehow.

“Stop fishing for compliments, Barton. I don’t play that goddamn game. When you came to SHIELD you were a punkass kid with a chip on your shoulder the size of the motherfucking Plymouth Rock. No reason to stay except you had nowhere else safe to go. I didn’t trust you as far as I could throw you. Next thing I know, you’ve somehow subverted my best damn agent so far he’s sending me paperwork filled with cutesy little in-jokes he’s using to flirt with you--” Clint choked on his coffee. “Don’t you fucking dare try to deny it. And it became clear pretty fucking quickly that he had no intention of ever giving you up.”

Fury paused to take a sip of coffee, and Clint took the opportunity to grab Lucky and haul him half into his lap, digging his fingers into soft fur. Lucky grumbled at him and squiggled away. The brief wrestling match as the heavy dog slid off his lap gave him a moment to compose his expression-- he hoped.

“Phil’s many damn things, but anyone who calls him a soft touch doesn’t understand him at all. He’s got the highest standards of anyone I fucking know, Steven Goddamn Rogers included. His problem is he sees who people _could_ be more clearly than is good for him. So, yeah, it made an impression. Made even more of an impression when you brought in the Black Widow.”

“Yeah, nearly impressioned me right to the Fridge,” Clint said.

“Fuck that shit, you were never headed there. You brought Natasha to us, Clint. You trusted SHIELD to save her. Like I said, it makes an impression. The way you treated her made an impression. And if that wasn’t enough, think about this: I had an entire damn underground lab full of scientists poking at that Tesseract for too fucking long to go into, and _you’re_ the one who realized it went two goddamn ways. Yeah, I trusted you. And don’t you dare tell me I was wrong.”

Weak laughter bubbled up in him, despite how very not funny the situation was.

“And here just before it all went down, Maria Hill reminded me I always worked well alone.” Clint wondered if his voice sounded as strung-out airless to Fury as it did inside his head. Fury snorted.

“Well no shit you do, but that’s not where you’re most useful. Always did do better with a team, reminding you to get your head out of your own backside, Barton. You’re like Phil that way, too. Both of you been too far up your own butts lately. He could have used you or Natasha, if I’d had you to spare.”

Yes, that sounded about right. They could both have used Nat to straighten them out, but Clint understood why Fury hadn’t left her to them. Nat had barely been home for more than two weeks at a stretch, since the Battle of New York. As one of Fury’s few remaining fingers, it made sense she’d be off on his business most of the time-- far more sense, now that Clint knew Fury had started to fitfully pull at the slender strands that turned out to be the tips of HYDRA’s tentacles. That left Clint, and, well….

“But you didn’t trust me, not after Loki compromised me,” Clint said, softly. Fury shrugged.

“Became clear pretty quickly that whatever that bastard did to you, he was long gone. I was quick enough to trust you with the South America mission, when the shit was nearing the fan. D’you think I’d have let anyone else go on that? No, trust had very fucking little to do with it. You were a _mess_ , Barton. A flat-out headcase. You needed to get yourself in order, and you didn’t need any distractions like a mostly-dead Phil to keep you from doing it.”

“Yeah, thanks for that, I nearly went crazy. Do I have you to thank for the oh-so-helpful persecution from the WSC, as well?”

“Eh, you’re still an Agent of SHIELD, Clint, or were. Got to get some kind of use out of you.”

The admission should have made him angry, or maybe cold, or really anything except tired. Possibly a little relieved, just to know what had happened-- it wasn’t the kind of talk you had in a Dunkin’ Donuts in Glen Burnie, when you were afraid your world might be ending. 

This was Fury, giving Clint a chance to debrief _him_ for once, and it was shocking how little he felt, after everything.

“You laid me out for bait. See who your allies were on the Council and in SHIELD by how they reacted to me.”

“No fuck. I’d apologize for it, but I hope you know I wouldn’t have done it if I’d had any other options. Anyway, with Phil, I was certain you’d find the information on your own, if I gave you enough time. Made sense to let you, then clean up whatever you’d used to exploit it.”

“And did you?”

“Locked down Streiten’s files after you got in, didn’t I?” Fury said. “And didn’t say jack shit about it to you or anyone else. So, no more WSC, no more me, no one holding you back. Now you’ve got a free hand, what’re you gonna do with it?”

Which was the question of the hour. How much _did_ Fury know? About Phil coming to Clint in New York? Clint seeing him in Wichita? In Lima? In Ravenna? Fury could be a sadistic bastard when it suited him, but somehow Clint couldn’t imagine the guy fucking with Clint’s head just because. 

So, no, he probably didn’t know. Clint drew himself up, and forced himself to remain level as he said:

“In general? What I’ve been doing, I guess. Make sure the building here stays safe. As for SHIELD? I don’t know. I’d say it depends on what SHIELD turns out to be, but it’s Phil’s baby, so whatever it is, I’ll be able to trust it. But I don’t know if I want to be part of it, now.”

“Yeah, that’s not what I was really asking, Barton.”

Clint hadn’t thought so, but it had been worth a try.

“With Director Coulson? It’s the same answer. I’ll keep in touch with Skye, keep passing on information. Help how I can, go where he needs me.” _But I can’t be a part of him now,_ went unspoken and-- Clint hoped-- unheard. He hurried on. “If I can find Nat, if she wants to be found, I’ll bring her in too. Meanwhile, if you’ve got anything you need done,” he shrugged. “I’m your man, I guess.”

He could have blamed it on habit, yeah. Or justified the offer by explaining how Fury might be manipulative, but Clint was never _not_ going to end up fighting some old enemy or another, and Fury knew where he could find them. Or… he could admit, if only to himself, that it worked best this way: whatever work Fury gave him would be nearly certain to benefit Phil and Skye. Without him having to risk _seeing_ Phil.

During the course of his speech, Fury’d been growing increasingly restless, or incredulous. His only outward reaction at the end was a snort, but it was the kind of snort that had ended several promising weapons development programs in the planning stages.

“You talk like Phil doesn’t want your ass, and we both know that’s not true,” he said. “He _needs_ you with him.” 

It would have been easiest to shrug, pretend to agree, get his one-eyed, too-perceptive ex-boss out of his apartment with a half-promise. What would _not_ have been easy, or even only mildly dangerous, was to choose the moment to be bitter and candid. So, of course, that was what Clint’s brain chose to do.

“He made it very clear to me, several times, that he doesn’t need me, sir. I’m convenient and useful, and a friend, but there’s nothing I could do for him on the Bus that I can’t do for him-- better-- from here.” _Except hold him, and fuck him, and mark him, and-- no. No, that’s in the past now, Clint. Your decision. Because you needed that more than he does._

“What the hell has that man been saying?” Fury said, his voice gone stiff and high. “And why the fuck have you been believing him, Barton? You’ve always been the most important thing to him next to SHIELD. And I wasn’t always sure you didn’t come before SHIELD.”

“I… really don’t think that’s true, Nick. And if it was, it isn’t now. Trust me, he’s made it very clear.”

With a frustrated grumble, Fury shoved himself up from the couch. He slapped his coffee mug back down on the table and glared at Clint.

“I think you’re full of shit, Barton,” he said. “But if you’re so sure about that, I guess maybe I should leave you to your wallowing in your own misery.”

He stalked towards the door, and Clint followed, a little bewildered. At the door, Fury turned again.

“And if you’re that sure, you probably don’t want to read this, because you already know what it says. Then again? Maybe you don’t.”

He was holding out an envelope, a little crinkled, one corner spindled. It was stuffed fat with paper, and his own name was on it, in Phil’s heartbreakingly familiar scrawl. Clint wasn’t sure whether it was too late to run and jump out that window, to avoid whatever fresh hell was waiting for him inside the #10.

He took it, because if he didn’t, Fury was just going to get shirtier. The paper was cool in his hands, smooth, just a normal little everyday envelope. Not something at all like a ticking bomb with a very uncertain timer.

“I’ll see you around, Clint,” Fury said, his voice gone gentler for a moment. His hand was heavy on Clint’s shoulder, and Clint looked up into those mirrored sunglasses, and the man beneath them. Fury gave him a brief smile, and shook him gently. “By the way,” he said as he walked out the door, “That russian mobster you’ve got as a doorman? Very thorough. I approve.”

Clint was left standing in his own hallway, in his pajama pants, at too-early in the morning, with a sleepy mutt grumbling at his feet, completely bewildered.


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Letter and the Mission

Clint stumbled out onto the rooftop, the letter clutched tight in his hands. The air was thin and sweet, that just post-rain silkiness to it. He looked out across the neighboring buildings for a long while, drawing in slow breaths, closing his eyes as he exhaled. 

Ronin had stood here recent nights, whenever he was able to be home, and he had stood here so many others before that, proving his defense, armored and watchful. 

Right now, everything was crisp lines and the pinks and peaches of sunrise. Everything except the lines of cramped writing, that blurred in front of his eyes. He swallowed once, looked down, forced himself to read, curling over the parapet as his knees gave out.

_My dearest Hawkeye,_

_I don’t really expect a positive response to this; I know I don’t deserve one. Not after the way I treated you, after the things I said to you in Lima, having refused to listen to your reasons for setting up observation of me. You had good cause to be suspicious, as my recovery was being kept from you. I was being kept from you. And God knows what_ else _was being kept from you. You were right: you made a call I would not have hesitated to make, had I been in your position._

Clint shuffled, a little impatiently. Before Ravenna, that admission would have had him dropping his jaw. “You were right.” If Phil could write that, what other impossible things could he write? But Ravenna had already taught him to expect that, if not quite in words that naked. It wasn’t what he wanted to know, anymore.

Okay, maybe a little. 

He read on.

_I only recently received the rest of the intel about Project TAHITI, and, well, it’s a good thing your eyes were on me. Apparently that was the actual reason this team was brought together: to watch me. But their eyes were less benign than yours. May was watching me, reporting on me, trying to control me, to contain me._

“Aw, May, No....” Clint realized he’d muttered it out loud and slapped a hand over his mouth. “She _would_ though,” came out when he took the hand off, and he slapped it right back on, then turned a little wildly. No-- Fury would be long gone, no way to catch up to him. And that was probably for the best, because he didn’t think a conversation that started “I was gonna watch the guy anyway. Why couldn't you have picked me?” was going to go anywhere good. In fact, Clint was pretty sure it would have continued “I mean, apart from me being crazy.”

But then, much as he had admired Melinda May ever since they’d worked together on Phil’s team when he was a junior, and much as Phil liked her, Clint had never considered her especially good at figuring this shit out either. She just had a better act than he did. ‘Course, emotional intelligence probably hadn’t been high on Fury’s criteria. Actually checking in with Fury probably was, and well-- Clint wouldn't have told him shit. So there was that.

Couldn’t he see it wasn’t what Phil needed, though? Someone he had trusted, now watching his every step in case he broke down, so they could step in and save him from himself-- or from Fury? That was just twisted, just... _um, a lot like I did, I guess. Shit. I'm so sorry, Phil._

Well. It wasn’t exactly news to him, either, that he’d been _spectacularly fucked up_ for a while, so. 

Moving on.

_To you, I was always just Phil, and you were watching to keep me safe, to keep me near. And that is an act of love that I wish I had seen as such at the time. Before I had to see the other side of the coin._

Oh. 

Clint realized he wasn’t breathing only when his lungs rebelled and opened his mouth in a gasp without his will. _Oh, babe, only you could say that was "love," not "the pathetic neediness of someone using you like a binky" and-- wait._

Love? Had Phil... did he know all along? Before Clint knew himself that he was in love? Fuck. FUCK. _No that... no. I couldn't stand it, if he knew and didn't mention out of pity, or disgust or... FUCK._

Ravenna, again. How fucking pathetic had he seemed to Phil?

His mind shied away, back to the letter.

_I make no apologies for my own lies in Lima except for the way you were hurt by them. I was hiding the truth from you for emotional reasons, to protect my then-battered psyche, to keep you from seeing me as low and broken and unworthy. To keep you from hurting me further._

Clint’s hands were shaking hard enough that he had to spread the paper out on the parapet to steady it, to steady himself. _Oh, Phil._ As if that had ever been a possibility. 

_My reasons were wrong, but my instinct was not. I was trained to keep secrets for SHIELD like a good little soldier, and this one was hidden under more layers than I had ever seen. If I had all the information at the time, I would have still held my tongue. Because of that, I understand clearly why you kept your own secrets. I offer no forgiveness, because you did nothing wrong._

Ah. Well. At least that explained why he was all ready to be friends again, in Ravenna. It was Clint’s own argument, his "we're spies we keep secrets" thing, coming back to haunt him, wasn’t it? _Except if we're both tarred with the same feather... god I'm tired._ Not that long ago, before SHIELD fell, maybe he would have been relieved to get this letter, but now it wasn’t enough. So much letter to be so fucking unsatisfying.

_What I would not have kept from you was my fear, how badly I was hurting, how desperately frightened I was. I should have trusted you with that. I should have trusted that you cared enough,_ loved me enough _to accept, to comfort, to help. I should have trusted that you wouldn’t run screaming just because things were ugly. I would never have run from you if you were the one who was damaged, and I should have trusted you._

Phil must have been pretty fucking far down the rabbit hole not to have known that. Or else... or else Clint had run more often than he thought. Not like Phil didn’t run, too, damnit-- Lima itself was proof-- but never once had he run from helping Clint. That had been bedrock for Clint for so long that seeing it written out just sounded funny.

_For my lack of belief, for my lack of trust, for_ that _I am sorry. More than I can ever tell you. Could I go back, I would change how I responded, how I treated you, the things I said to you and the accusations I hurled at your head._

“Holy shit,” Clint said, voice clear and stunned in the thin morning air, “That's an actual fucking apology.” Then he snapped his jaw shut, because he was _not_ going to talk back to a letter.

_I offer no excuses, because there is no way to excuse that. But I give you this as my reason: I was betrayed by the organization that I believed in more than anything save one person. I couldn’t trust SHIELD, and I couldn’t trust my own memories. I thought that meant I couldn’t trust anything about me, including my feelings (pheelings-- heh) for you. I thought that, as broken as I was, there was no way you would still want me, that you could still care for me._

Apparently, talking back to letters was a thing Clint did now, because he glared down at this one, at the neat cursive in which Phil had bled out his neuroses, and growled.

“You absolute, idiotic, complete jackass. Why the hell would that make any difference whatsoever?”

_You always talk about my strength, my capabilities, but you forget to mention your own. You are the strongest man I know. You have come through so much with your grin firmly fixed in place, and your heart so open and warm. I should have leaned on that, rather than pushing you away out of some weird sense of duty and out of fear. I should have trusted you._

_And now you’re probably expecting a real apology and a confession of undying love._

Clint… hadn’t been. Much. Which apparently was a good thing, since he wasn't going to get one, it looked like. Stopping reading wasn’t an option, so Clint just braced himself for the words to come, whatever the hell excuses they were.

_You wouldn’t be wrong, but you probably misunderstand the reasons._

“... Glrk?” 

Okay, well, so it was a good thing the letter couldn’t hear him. Clint read that sentence again. Then another time for good measure. Scrubbed his hands over his temple, then ran his palms hard over the grit on the parapet. There was just no understanding that, without reading.

He took a big breath, like he was preparing to dive, and read on.

_After learning about my death and… reanimation (and if you make a zombie joke here, I will give you a step-by-step demonstration of the paperclip trick), I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare._

(Heh. Night of the Living Coulson. Too soon?)

_I was in some sideways world where everything I thought I had known was wrong. You were gone, and then, when The Fridge was taken and Daniels escaped, I had to go to Portland. Clint, I did not_ want _to go to Portland._

Right. _Please, I don't need to read this. I don't need to hear this; if Audrey turned you down, if she was mad at you-- well, she was insane, first of all. But I don't want to know, babe._

Not if this was part of the “reasons” Clint might misunderstand. He didn’t think he could stand to be told that he was second best. Not after Phil had written the L-word. Shit. Of course.

_There I was, in the middle of self-discovery about the love of my life, and I had to go see the woman who had been a dalliance on the side. An interruption. A distraction from the times you were away. I decided before I went that I would stay away from her, try to keep her from learning that I was still alive. But I heard her talking to my team about me, and it was shocking. Her feelings for me were deeper than I had known. I still don’t know if it was my presence before or my absence since my death that made her speak so fondly. And I_ was _shocked. Bemused. Honestly, I was ashamed of myself._

In the middle of the buzzing that had started in his head, Clint had one coherent thought. _Of course you blame yourself. You've got_ no _fucking clue what you do to people._ Phil wasn’t wrong; Audrey was never cut out for the batshit insane life they were leading since the fall of SHIELD. But what a way for her to lose. God, and now he felt sympathetic to Audrey. 

_I didn’t mean to hurt her. She and I both knew we were not exclusive._

If she hadn't figured out that Phil actually meant that, too, she was _really_ naive. From this distance, Clint could admit that he’d marked Phil up but good whenever he knew Phil was going out to Portland. It was childish, but hell-- no one had ever accused him of being emotionally mature. 

_But what neither she nor I knew was that there was not just_ someone _else in my life, there was_ The One _in my life._

Wait.

_There was you._

What?

_The only thing in the world I have ever trusted, that I have ever believed in completely, that I have ever been able to count on above everything, that I have loved with every part of me._

It had… when had it gotten that dusty, up on the rooftop? That hard to swallow? Had the brick and mortar always been that cold, or was it just that there was no blood in Clint, all of a sudden, to warm him up as he collapsed slowly into a slouch against the back of the parapet? 

Because. Well. 

God.

Oh god.

(But what if it’s a trick? Or what if he is just making himself believe it? And why NOW?)

“Why the hell NOW?” It was a wail, straight-up and with no excuses. Not that Clint would have particularly cared to try and make them at the moment. “Couldn't you have figured this out years ago? You're supposed to be the smart one!”

There was at least a page left. At this rate, Clint was going to dribble all over the rooftop in a melting pile of emotion before he got through it. He had to pull himself together enough to keep reading-- just take it all in and not process till he got to the end, if he could help it.

_It’s not fair of me to tell you this now, after everything, how I acted toward you in Lima, how I treated you after being captured by Centipede when I was too chickenshit to just call you and beg for your help. You have always been perfect. You are light and joy and warmth, madness and passion and burning fire. For years, I held back, afraid of being consumed by that fire, and now, now that I sent you away, I see that I should have thrown myself into that fire, allowed myself to be immolated, burned away until nothing was left but my heart._

That was... wow... that was....

Phil turning into a romance novel, is what that was.

(Was it usually this hot this early in the mornings? Or was it just Clint? When did his pants get so tight?)

(Moving. On.)

_It’s been so hard since you walked out of my office._

He couldn't help it; he snorted at that one, even as his eyes stung. Opened his mouth to mutter something, but the tangle of reactions was too thick to force past his teeth. _You think?-- Yeah, 'hard' was part of the problem-- well you fucking deserved it-- it was hard on me too, Phil-- it hurt like hell._ Eventually he gave up and went back to reading.

_But I’m proud of you for doing that. For not taking my verbal abuse. For not treating yourself like you deserved that. You_ never _deserve that kind of treatment. Your giant heart deserves to be treated tenderly, carefully, lovingly. All the things I never gave you outside of the times we were having sex._

Clint shook his head and grumbled at himself. Reacting took too much time, and he’d gone from having to steel himself before reading each paragraph to racing, his heart beating desperately as he tumbled over himself getting to the end of each line.

_And I should have. My God, I should have. As soon as you were gone, I started regretting letting you leave. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to understand that you weren’t coming back. That I’d actually screwed up that badly. That I’d hurt you that much. That I_ could _hurt you that deeply. Maybe if I’d gone straight to you then. Maybe if I’d called you and explained as soon as I understood…_

Despite his best intentions, Clint did pause there, because he was ranting and shaking the letter.

“You thought you couldn't _hurt_ me that bad? Phil Coulson just what the fuck did you think you'd been to me all these years? As if there's anyone else, besides Nat, who could ever get half as deep? Christ, no wonder you were such an asshole about it.”

For a bare moment, he imagined what that would have been like. Phil rising, the chair falling, calling "stop!" Phil showing up on his doorstep while Clint was in the middle of his epic drunk.

Somehow, Clint didn’t think it would have gone that well.

_Thank god we had some sense of self-preservation,_ he thought, and picked the letter back up.

_When you were taken by the jackass with a pointy stick, I was lost. There was a kill order given for you, and, I’ll admit this only to you, part of the reason I went after him alone was to pay him back for that. I never thought you would return, alive and whole, to me. I knew the risk, and I was willing to take it, because there was nothing left for me here. Without you. Had I known Natasha was going to knock him out of your head, had I known she would give you back to me, I would have made very different decisions that day._

So would a lot of them. Including Loki.

_And then we were given a second chance, and all I did was fuck it up._

That was the hell of it, though. Except for Lima, except for all the caltrops they’d planted in the relationship minefield, to be tripped over later, it had actually been pretty fucking amazing. Enough to convince Clint he wasn’t going to compromise, anyway.

Which… maybe it was going to turn out that he didn’t have to. Depending on how the rest of the letter went.

Reading on.

_I don’t deserve your forgiveness or understanding, but I am asking you to understand, anyway. I am sorry I didn’t give you the trust I should have. That I lost my faith in you and your giant heart. I never gave you a chance to try to understand where my head was, and I made a unilateral decision to push you away, afraid that you would see me broken and decide I wasn’t worth your time. That was unfair. I should have believed in your ability to make your own decisions._

_To be fair to myself, I’m still not sure exactly how I got your time and attention in the first place. You’re gorgeous, smart, funny, charming, caring, and beautiful inside and out. You are also_ remarkably _good in bed. You could have anyone in the world you wanted, and I never could wrap my brain around you wanting me. For years, I waited for you to find someone else, someone more worthy of you, and for me to be left behind._

“You are always worth my time, you gigantic idiot. Deaf, dumb, blind and out of your ever-lovin' mind you'd _still_ be worth my time.”

That… came out louder than Clint had expected. He resisted the urge to look over the parapet and see if anyone had heard. But “left behind?” He was serious with that?

“Reading _on_ ,” Clint muttered.

_No. Not that. You never would have left me. Even if you had found love elsewhere, you would have still cared. Still been there for me. I can see that now where I couldn’t before. It would have changed things between us, to lose the physical, the sex. But our friendship could have withstood it. We have years between us that prove that._

_And that is what I miss the most, now. I miss YOU. I miss your friendship and our easy understanding. I miss our inside jokes and your superpower of making me say the weirdest shit. I don’t deserve your heart, but I would like your phorgiveness and phriendship, at the least. If that is all you can give, I will accept it gratefully_.

Clint remembered saying just that to Nat, about Audrey. That if-- when-- Phil settled down with her, the friendship would be enough for Clint. It was a fucking lie, and Nat probably had known it. It would have been a disaster. He, at least, had seen that well enough to have perpetrated that horrible melodramatic scene on Phil in Ravenna. But overwrought as he might have gotten, he wasn’t wrong. They couldn’t go back. 

“‘Accept it gratefully,’ Phil? You better not. You fucking well better not. Who the hell do you think you're fooling? Me? Or yourself. You don't go back to skim once you've had a taste of cream.”

It was starting to feel seriously unfair that Phil was only here on paper, not in fact. He might have gotten ravished, or he might have gotten shaken, Clint wasn’t entirely sure, but he needed, desperately, to be able to _touch_ the man. Use his tongue, and hands, and body, and convince him that there was no going back.

Since there was no Phil present, he read on.

And forgot to think, for the remainder of the letter.

_What I am asking for, however, is this: I want you. I want you in my life, in my heart, in my bed as often as we can manage with these crazy lives we lead. I want to give you everything that I am, and I want to be able to demand the same from you in return. I want YOU, Clint. All of you. I will do anything to have you back in my life, give you anything, give up anything. For you. If there is any way you can forgive me, anything I can do to prove that I’m not keeping any part of me from you, tell me. I want this, Clint. I want US. I want to be yours entirely. I want every part of you to be mine._

_You don’t have to answer now, but, please, babe, think it over. If you are willing to give me one more chance to make it right, if there is anything I can do to make up for the way I screwed it up, screwed you over, tell me. Whatever you want, whatever you need from me. Ask, and it’s yours. For you, I would leave SHIELD. For you, I would leave my team. Anything. I’d say “no pressure,” but you know better than to believe me on that._

_I will wait for your answer. As long as you need me to wait. Until you give me a reason to stop waiting. No matter what you decide, please, call me. I miss you._

_Clinton Francis Barton, I love you. And I’m so, so sorry._

_Phondly, Phinally yours,  
Phil_

For a long time after, watching the sun rise over the borough skyline, the antennas and satellite dishes and smokestacks, the only coherent thought in his head was: 

"Oh my god, our timing sucks."

Eventually, the street came to life below him. Apartment doors and car doors slammed, as little figures raced off with coffee in their hands or on the hoods of their vehicles. Voices drifted up; children chattering a mile a minute as they hounded their mother all the way down the block. Clint closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing his heart to shrink back into his chest.

It was no good; it had burst at some point while he was reading, ended up scattered all over everything, beating in time with the stuttering rhythm of the early traffic. And he felt strangely fine, having his heart out there with a life of its own. Probably off looking for Phil already.

He wondered, when Phil had written the letter, if he’d heard Clint’s voice in his head, responding. Couldn’t have, Clint decided, or else he wouldn’t have written half of what he did. Especially that final idiocy about _calling_ Phil to respond to the letter.

There was no way he was gonna do this over the phone. 

_Because when I get you to finally get it through your stupid, fucked-up head that we're doing this, Phil, that you deserve this, I want to have you right there under my hands. Not gonna let you up for_ days _. You are going to_ ache _, love._

Which just left one salient question: where the hell _was_ Phil?

\----

Five hours into what was going to be at least a fifteen-hour scramble, they'd finally identified the point of origin of Dr. Day's email; a server linked to the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "They" mostly meant "Skye," of course, with a minor assist from Antoine Triplett. 

(At some point, Phil was going to find something that Triplett wasn't good at, he was sure of it. It was probably going to be something utterly cliched, like dancing. Huh. Madison was a college town. If there wasn't at least one club, he'd eat his tie. The guy deserved a break. They all did. Vending machine candy bars in poolside motels didn't count, and if Triplett thought they did, he was going to need close watching, lest he turn into another Phil. Maybe when this was over he could test the hypothesis-- and maybe if he’d managed to bring off the miracle, Clint could join them? God, the way Clint looked under strobe lights, hips swaying to the beat, eyes darting-- Phil'd dragged him straight off the dance floor and into beds (or closets, or sufficiently dark corners) more than once.)

Where was he? Madison. Right. 

(Anyway, Skye's enthusiasm aside, Clint _had_ jumped out of a window rather than stay in the same room with him, not long ago. His heart and dick might be leaping way ahead of themselves here. And even if they weren't, having off-time in Madison was predicated on them actually finding the damned scientists safe, first.)

"So what's in Madison that would draw Raina there, with a bunch of SHIELD scientists as hostages?" he asked. “And at a university, instead of someplace she could actually control and defend?”

"Oh, any number of things, I should think," Jemma said, flipping through the list of centers and facilities in the area. "Assuming she’s trying to get them to help her with her research-- which is what _I_ would do with kidnapped scientists. Um,” she paused and looked up, “not that I advocate kidnapping scientists. We don’t do well in captivity. We wither. Anyway. Fitz always wanted to visit the IceCube, but I don’t think Sephina’s group were ever working in particle astrophysics-- ooh, no, look, they've got a Center for Applied Microelectronics. Or, wait, no, the stem cell and regenerative medicine center. That is, if she’s still working in neural regeneration. Oh, but there’s a Center for Eukaryotic Structural Genomics, Dr. Rucker would like that--." She looked up to find her entire team staring at her, with what Phil thought was an impressively matched set of patiently blank expressions. "I'm sorry sir, it's going to take me a little to sort this."

“How hard can it be?” Skye asked, leaning over Jemma’s shoulder. “How big is the University… any… way…” she trailed off as Jemma flipped to show her a map, with the campus spread out along the shores of Lake Mendota for what looked like two miles. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, there was apparently an entire extra swath of parkland, too. 

“Undergraduate enrollments are about 30,000,” Jemma said gently. Skye felt faint.

“Good thing we’re not looking for undergrads, huh? So, that’s going to take a while.”

"I can help with that," Trip volunteered, "and help identify properties nearby that might serve as a temporary base for Raina's staff. And also--" Phil waved him off. _Seriously. There has to be something. Maybe he has crippling seasonal allergies?_

When he turned around to leave, he nearly turned into Melinda May, who raised an eyebrow at him.

"Once I've got the course locked in and autopilot on, what do you need me on?" she asked, as they walked out of the command center and towards the cockpit. It came out evenly, almost lightly, and Phil realized with a start that she'd been a little lighter around him ever since Fury had effectively ended her double-duty. _Just because she's good at it doesn't mean she's actually made for it._

"Napping, first. We'll all need to. Then some kind of tactical plan for when we hit the ground-- you can start with identifying what we even have left to work with, since we're down the van. Hopefully by the time you've slept and taken inventory, Trip and Jemma will have news for us."

"Have you thought about the possibility some of the the scientists went willingly?" she asked, and Phil nodded.

"Yes, and I'll want contingency plans for that scenario, too. Jemma will... Jemma's an agent, she'll handle it."

"What _are_ our contingency plans in that case? We can't arrest them, we have nowhere to take them-- we can't keep dumping our problems on the military." 

Phil threw up his hands, and tried not to burst into hysterical laughter.

"I have no idea, none whatsoever. Kick their asses and send them on their way?" That got him the start of a smile, just at the corner of May's mouth, and it was good to see. 

"I can work with that," she said, and then sobered a little, looking at him. He tried to keep his face impassive as he looked back. _Nothing to see here, Melinda. I'm fine. I'll be fine. I_ have _to be fine. Just keep me going and don't let me have a quiet moment, at least not until Clint's here to hold me down when I dream. If he's willing to come. Heh, if he's willing to come-- Oh, god, please let none of that be showing in my face._

After a long moment, the other side of her mouth turned up, and she nodded firmly at him, like he'd passed some kind of internal test. She slipped through the galley, greeting Skye as she went, and into the cockpit.

"Hiya boss, I made you a sandwich," Skye said, thrusting the plate at Phil, and he took it out of reflex.

"Processed cheese and lunch meat, yay!" he said when he glanced down, and Skye laughed with him. "When we have a moment to breathe, I'm handing someone the credit card and we're getting food on this old Bus that doesn't remind me of fourth grade." 

"Not gonna argue with you, bossman," Skye said, and took a bite of an identically floppy sandwich.

They spent a few moments in mutual silence, eating their industrialized lunch, before Skye shifted.

"AC?" she asked quietly, "do you think this could be another trap?" He looked over at her, to find her frowning at her hands.

"It's highly likely. Raina seems to be fond of them; she knows we can't take the chance that it's not." He shrugged. "She's like you or I, Skye, that way; she knows how to read us, she knows what we want," _well, she doesn't know everything-- doesn't know about Clint-- but I'm sure that's a matter of time, now,_ "and that's what makes her dangerous. She knows what you want to hear, and she doesn't lie. Often. Just twists truths." _She cried when they told her_ , Raina had said. And _She loved you_. What if Raina _had_ known about Clint? How badly would she have used that revelation? _He knows you're there, he watches you every night. Will he be able to handle you, if he finds out what's in your head?_

_Yes, Raina, far better than I could handle him, as it turns out._

"What we _want_ to hear?" Skye's voice had taken on a distinctly mousy quality, one Phil hadn't heard since she told him about Ward's betrayal.

"C'mon, let's take these down to the cargo bay," he said, and grabbed their water bottles off the counter.

"Okay?" Skye said, but followed behind obediently. "What are we gonna do there?"

"Sit in Lola and mope," Phil told her. And so they did.

____

"She told me I was a monster, like her." Skye spilled it out abruptly, nearly as soon as she was ensconced in Lola's passenger seat. Phil looked over at her and sighed. 

"When they took me, Skye, I was already afraid, and confused, and I was looking for a reason-- _desperate_ for a reason-- to get in that damned theta wave machine and let it open my head up," he said quietly, and looked down at his hands. "In order to convince me, Raina told me... she told me about Audrey mourning me. Crying over me. She reminded me I had no family but SHIELD, and then told me I had something normal out there that I could have had." He let the pause stretch deliberately, feeling his way to the end of the thought, and looked up at Skye. "She told me the truth, and it gave me the excuse I wanted. To do what she wanted."

"But... you didn't... you and Clint?"

"See?" Phil reached over to knock her shoulder, jostle her out of her defensive huddle. "Even Garrett didn’t know everything and couldn't actually predict the future, much less Raina. They're both false prophets, Skye; no one knows what you are or will be except you." _And in my case, I'm not even sure who I will become. Or who you will, I'm afraid._

"I'll remind you of that later, boss. I just... wonder. Did she mean because I'm an 0-8-4... or was she talking about the GH-325?" Skye flopped her head back on the seat, and looked over at Phil. Who was sure he was blanching, sure for a moment that she could see the diagrams and sketches as clearly as he still could in his mind's eye. Sure he'd been made.

"Either or both, or hoping you'd tell her something that would help her decide," Phil said when he finally found his voice. "And..." He stopped, squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them to look at her. "And if I told you it would all be all right, I'd be worse than Raina."

"Because I want to hear it but shouldn't?"

"Because I don't know if it's the truth; I only want it to be. I'll make it be, if I possibly can." 

Bless her, she didn't tell him _You can't possibly promise that._ She even smiled a bit.

"Yeah well, back at you." She frowned. "Anyway, you gotta stay sane so I know I will too. And so Clint doesn't kill me for letting you get in trouble."

"Clint would be more likely to blame himself," Phil responded without thinking, and then stopped short as his brain caught up with his mouth.

"Yeah I get that," Skye was saying, when his head cleared. "Or I get it _now_. I mean, him throwing himself out a window instead of waiting to see how you'd respond pretty much says he's got issues that way. Hey, AC--." She was poking at Phil's arm, and he blinked at her. "You realize you're not the only one who made mistakes, right? Like, seriously, he just _jumped out of a tower window_ on you. And don't forget that we met because he manipulated you into a meet-cute with a member of the Rising Tide, just so he could have someone on your Bus to make sure he wasn't missing anything with his little spy-cam set-up." 

_Because he wasn't entirely sure I wasn't a monster myself._

"Do you resent him for that?" Phil asked, deliberately ignoring the rest of her words for the sake of not breaking down. Skye raised an eyebrow in a very Maysian fashion, but let him get away with it.

"Resent him? No. Hell no. Not... not now. Not given that, when you found out about us, in Lima, he did that stupid white knight thing again. Tried to fall on the entire damn grenade himself, and got blown up real good." Phil winced. "No, it's just... you keep saying I'm good at reading people, but I _missed_ it. You and him. The way I missed Ward, too." 

"We all missed Ward. I'd blame myself, but that'd be flattery, really. It'd suggest I should have known better than Maria Hill, Nick Fury, Melinda May, you-- clearly that's not the case. Never beat yourself up for _anything_ having to do with that man."

"I'm not, really," Skye said, and Phil tried to replicate the May eyebrow himself. She snorted. "Okay, maybe I am. But see, if I missed him, if I missed you and Clint? What if I miss it in myself, if it happens? If I start going... off?" 

_Oh trust me, if it happens, it won't be that subtle,_ he didn't say.

"It's like any skill, you have to hone it," he said instead. "And face the facts that you'll have blind spots." _Like mine with Clint. One blind spot so big you could see it from Earth, without a telescope. And there's still a distinct possibility I've left it too late, broken it too completely. Where the_ hell _did that letter go?_

"All right," she said, just as Jemma's voice came over their comms:

"Sir? I think we've got the list narrowed down."

"We'll be right up," he said, and held out a hand to Skye. She was halfway out of Lola when her pocket began to pulse, and she pulled the little silver cam out of it. They both stared at it for half a moment, as it pulsed blue about the enamelled logo. 

_I can't... not now. Not if it's going to be bad. They need me. Please understand. Don't make me say it out loud._

Skye looked at him, head cocked, eyes searching.

"You go on," she said finally, and Phil nodded.

As he went up the stairs, she was already muttering into the little cam.

___

Phil dragged his reluctant feet to the top of the stairs, across the lounge, and up each step of the spiral steps to the command deck. His skin itched with a need to turn around and run back to the cargo bay, to snatch the cam out of Skye’s hand and spout every word he could think of that meant “I love you; please come back.” But he didn’t, couldn’t. Not yet. If Clint snapped the camera shut instead of looking at Phil’s face, if he shouted over the words of “yes” and “now” and “please…”

No. He couldn’t. Not yet. He had to be able to function still, to plan the mission, get his team to Madison, take care of those under his command. And, if Clint had meant what he’d said-- _we broke that, between us_ \-- then Phil was going to need time. Time to break down completely. Time to hurt and mourn and collapse. And right now… 

Reading Jemma and Trip's list of probable locations took very little time; spotting the one he was quite _certain_ Raina would pick took less. It couldn't have been more her style if it was wrapped in a Laura Ashley print ruffle. Skye hadn't appeared by the time he was finished, and he left the room rather than let his nerves show.

Making his office, Phil closed and locked the door before going to unlock the secret drawer that Skye now knew about. He reached in and collected the wide purple ribbon with hands that only trembled a little bit. Whether the shaking was from nerves or excitement, Phil really couldn’t tell. With a sigh, he dropped the ribbon back down in a heap and pushed the drawer shut. 

His desk chair creaked as he sat in it, pulling out a sheet of paper and his favorite pen and laying them both on the desk in front of him. 

A smile tugged at his lips, and he let himself have one flash of hope as he curled his fingers around the pen and got ready to write.

_This will work. This will give him time to think about it, and give me time to work on the mission and then… and then…_ Phil sighed and began to write, his heart bleeding onto the paper in ink and letters. _Oh god, please._ Please _let this work._  
\----

“Kate! Kaaaaaate! Katie- _Kate_! Ally ally oxen free!” 

Clint’s voice echoed in the stairway as he thundered down it, duffel slung over his shoulder. He’d texted Kate nearly as soon as he'd finished with a semi-coherent plan of action. The text was probably not entirely intelligible, given that he was rooting around in the bottom of his dresser, searching for clean boxers, as he typed. 

At least he hadn’t actually sent a picture of his underwear drawer. This time. 

Instead of calling to curse him out, Kate had messaged back that she was already on her way over, and she’d meet him and could he please not do whatever stupid thing he was thinking of doing, until she got there?

_I’m here! Commence stupidity!_ she'd sent, and he'd read it just as he zipped up his duffel bag. 

So where the fuck was “here?”

“Kate! MARCO!” he yelled again.

“Polo!” a small voice floated up the stairway, and Clint stopped stock still, because the basement? What the hell was she doing in the basement?

“What the hell are you doing in the basement?” he called, as he tripped down the stairs. Lucky, who’d snuck out the door behind him, dogged his heels, whuffling urgently.

“We’re starting the pilot light-- and you left horrible instructions, by the way!”

We?

“We?” Clint asked, as he stumbled off the last few stairs and into the damp gloom of the basement. “Who’s we?”

“Morning, bro!” said Basil, and Clint blinked.

Basil was hunched over the little pilot light door at the bottom of their huge, battered hot water boiler. The top half of his tracksuit was tied around his waist, thankfully concealing his ass. He was wearing-- improbably-- a Radiohead t-shirt, and the sharp-toothed scary bear logo grinned at Clint from Basil’s back. Above it, Basil had twisted his moustachio’d head around, and was grinning, too.

Kate was leaning against the wall next to him, managing somehow not to look out of place despite wearing an outfit nearly identical to the one Waarzegster had worn during their walk in Copenhagen. (Her scarf was far nattier, a light gauzy purple print.) 

“What the hell are you doing?” Clint asked, and sat down on the steps in his shock.

“He’s fixing the gas flow, Clint, so that we stop having to relight the pilot every couple days.”

“Is no problem, bro. Used to fix boilers for Ivan many times.”

Clint sighed, as Basil knocked his knuckles against it and the hollow sound reverberated.

“Piece of shit, isn’t it?”

“What? No, bro, no. Is a good boiler. Seen many worse boilers in buildings Ivan owns. Needs some love, bro, is all. Little attention paid, seriously.”

Clint looked from Kate, to Basil, and back. _Way too fucking early to be dealing with this shit._ Lucky curled around his knees, and dug his jaw firmly into Clint’s thigh. He had practically whined when the duffel bag had made its appearance that morning.

As if Clint didn’t feel guilty enough already.

And now, there was a tracksuit vampire fixing his boiler, because he was a goddamned absentee landlord, who couldn’t take care of his own shit. Wait… absentee _ex_ -landlord. 

Some kind of catch he was. Phil had to be crazy.

“So, uh, _why_ are you down here, fixing my boiler? Aren’t you supposed to be lurking around looking threatening or something?” 

Now, it was early in the morning still, yes. And Clint hadn’t had his coffee yet, yes. Also, Clint could be kind of dense, yes.

But. Even _Clint_ couldn’t miss the way Basil’s eyes skittered towards Kate, before he shrugged with all the innocence of a black bear caught in a garbage can.

Kate was too busy glaring at Clint to notice.

“Because I asked him to!” she said. “And he’s a perfectly nice guy if you get to know him!”

Clint wondered if she’d said the same thing about him, once. He also wondered if Basil realized his blush made him look like a moustachioed radish. 

“Well, it’s your building, Katie-Kate, you do what you want.” _Because apparently I’ve been away too long already, if you’ve got a tracksuit vampire on a leash._ He wondered when Kate was going to notice just how very long the trail of men she left lying on the floor in her footsteps was. Kinda hoped she never did.

“I will.”

“But… why?” He asked Basil again. “Won’t this get you in trouble with your boss?”

“Boss don’t know, and if boss know, boss don’t care,” Basil shrugged. “I tell boss, ‘Clint Barton is Avenger, Clint Barton is friends with Tony Stark, Clint Barton sold building,’ and he shrugs and mutters. I tell him ‘Clint Barton fights HYDRA,’ and he decides, is good to ignore building for a while, ignore Clint Barton and Katherine Bishop and alla that mess.”

The first three, Clint had been kinda expecting-- and was exactly what he’d hoped for when he’d enlisted Tony’s lawyers and Tony’s name, and Kate’s too, for that matter. The bit about HYDRA was….

“Your boss have a problem with HYDRA?”

“Nazi goons,” Basil grumbled, then shook his head. “Boss not care one way or another, until HYDRA get in his business, and his business, their business not mix much before, bro. But boss’s business needs… politicians to buy. People to look other way. People who want gamble, don’t want control. HYDRA not stop until they control everyone, bro. Boss not young, not stupid; Boss remember Khrushchev, bro, remember Stalin, from when baby boss. Is room for bros like boss in system like that, yes, but back in past, when Boss’s daddy no longer useful to politician, boss’s daddy go to Siberia. Here in America, worst boss get if no longer useful, is nice time in comfy cell, with cable. No bad deal, bro. So. Boss not going to help HYDRA.”

“Oh,” Clint said, and Kate came over to sit next to him and bump his shoulder with hers.

“Anyway,” Basil said, “Is what I reminded boss, bro. If boss forget, I will know, bro. Will remind boss again.”

“Thanks?” Clint said.

“So,” Kate prompted him, after a somewhat awkward silence where Basil went back to his work, grunting as he rooted around in the tiny space, and the bear on his back stretched into an even wider leer. “You’re off again? Already?”

“Yeah. I… yeah.”

“HYDRA? Or what? I mean, if you can--” Kate wrapped her hands together, and Clint covered them with his own and squeezed. 

“Kinda? Mostly, mostly I’m answering a question you asked me a while back.” He kissed her on the forehead again, before she could get another question out, and stood up. Lucky protested with a sharp bark, and Clint bent down to hug him tight, burying his face in dog fur until he could control his emotions. “I’ll keep safe, okay,” he said, to both of them-- or maybe all of them.

“Wait--” Kate said, jumping to her feet. “Wait. _Which_ question? Clint?”

He couldn’t help the damned smile blooming on his face, so he let it answer for him, and added a wink as he saw her catch the implication.

The hug caught him off guard, a little. Nearly tipped him over. 

“It’s not a sure thing,” he told her, “not yet.”

“Yes it is,” she said back, and then, in her most serious tone, “You’re Hawkeye. Of course it is. Go get him, and don’t worry about us.” She spun him around and pushed him towards the doorway. 

He didn’t look back as he went up the stairs and collected his duffel. 

Either he’d be back soon or he wouldn’t; whichever happened he had to trust that Katie-Kate had it all in hand.

She was pretty damn amazing, his Hawkeye. Time to let her loose. 

He had a flight to catch, and pray he was in better time, this time.

____

The little crease between Skye's eyebrows was enough to draw AC to her, when she came to hover in the command room doorway. Trip had already thrown maps and schematics up on every available screen and he and AC were arguing over the best approaches to something that looked either like a concrete nuclear testing bunker, or the usual Brutalist college architecture. They'd clearly started without her

AC clapped them Trip on the shoulder, then slipped over and tilted his head to hers.

"He talked to the Fortune Teller," she said with no preamble. "Dr. Rucker, at least, had been trying to sell their services to the highest bidder. I think it's time to Admiral Ackbar this baby."

"It's a trap?" Phil asked, and she nodded.

"It's a trap."  
____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Bad Day at the Biotron


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad Day at the Biotron

To say that Jemma had freaked out would have been an overstatement. Well. Not _over_ statement, because that would imply that she’d been somewhat calm about the news that Dr. Rucker, at least, had gone willingly with Raina’s goon squad in Ravenna. It certainly wasn’t an _under_ statement; Jemma Simmons was, when all was said and done, an agent of SHIELD, and losing the plot entirely over a piddling betrayal like that, given the drastic ones she'd so recently experienced, was never going to have been an option.

No, Skye decided, “Jemma freaked out” was maybe a _side_ statement. Close to the truth but not _quite_ there. Nothing quite covered the mix of nervous denial, outrage, fluttering hands, stuttering tongue that only partly concealed her determination. It was weird, watching petite vibrant Jemma turn into Melinda May beneath the skin.

“But the others,” she said, twitching under Skye’s hand on her shoulder. Jemma turned to catch all their eyes as she said it, drawing them back to her after they’d all-- in their own ways-- beaten retreats to corners of the briefing room while her outrage was fresh. “There is no _possible_ way that Sephie, that any of the others, could have gone willingly. Raina-- Rucker-- they _must_ be holding the others hostage. We’re going to rescue them, surely? Ag-- Director?”

“Yes, Jemma,” AC said, meeting her eyes, his voice gentle. “Of course we are.” 

His little side-long glance after that was directed at Melinda May. So was the quick eyebrow raise that had to be some sort of challenge, masquerading as a question-- or maybe vice versa. May only shrugged. She’d braced herself at ease in the doorway, and Skye was beginning to be able to read her well enough to know that was May's way of retreating. It was the oddest falling sensation, realizing that May didn't always have it all together, that at the moment she was actually _uncertain_. May was supposed to just be _there_ , like a law of the universe.

_We’re just growing up all over the place here._

“We don’t leave anyone behind,” Trip added to Jemma, his voice doing that warm rumbly thing it did, and Skye felt Jemma’s shoulder unkink under her fingers. 

“Hmph,” AC said, which might have been agreement or might have been AC looking for a bad pun and not finding one-- thank god. “So, ten minutes for everyone to settle, and then briefing. Yes?”

\----

If by “settling” AC had meant “change into another natty suit and a fresh kevlar vest,” then he and Trip were clearly reading from some section of the SHIELD manual she’d never seen. (She’d never seen any of it. If there even _was_ a SHIELD manual. She’d only been an actual-facts agent for, like, a hot minute. Back when she was an asset, Ward had never given her one, and he probably _would_ have, if only to drive her to despair and crying on his shoulder and _oops my bitterness slipping out again there_.)

 

They were back in the briefing room, in the fifteen minutes before May had to go forward and prepare for landing, and both AC and Trip were slipping into their jackets like some kind of tandem suiting-up partners. 

 

“Between us, Jemma and I identified this as the most likely place for Raina to hole up," Trip said, "and Skye was able to hack into some security servers for us and confirm a rental at one of the research facilities by a group with ties back to the old Project Centipede.” He brought the schematics of a building up with a flick of his hand, then ended the gesture by shooting his cuff with the other.

 

“The Biotron." Jemma took over from him smoothly. “I’ve always wanted to see it. It’s an amazing facility-- for a public university, anyway. Not up to SHIELD Academy standards, but…” her voice faltered. From the little news they’d gleaned about the SHIELD Sci-Tech Academy, there was little left to have standards _for_. “Anyway. The Biotron is fully compartmentalized. It’s designed to keep research experiments in total biological isolation.The filtration systems for each unit are individually controlled. All the doors are doubled, and you can’t access one room from another. Crawling through ducts is _right out_. It’s _brilliant_ as a research design.”

“And as a way to isolate hostages,” May growled, and Skye looked over at her. She clearly didn’t like it, not at all, but she didn't say anything further. Either she’d argued with AC about it in private, or maybe Skye was just reading her wrong. _And I’m supposed to be good at this. Thanks, AC. Maybe she’s just got gas._

“Exactly,” Trip agreed, tweaking his lapels straight just as, across the room, AC did the same. “There’s a centralized control room, for security and for HVAC. So that’s where we’ve got to get.” 

“That’s where _Skye_ has to get,” May said, not unkindly, and _woah_. 

Skye found herself blinking at May, who raised one eyebrow back at her. _You_ are _a full Agent, are you not?_ the eyebrow said, and Skye froze, desperately hoping she wasn't showing the surge of joy that flushed through her. _She thinks I'm competent! And I can read eyebrow now!_

“Yeah, that’s where I end up,” she replied, when she remembered how to squeak-- er, speak.

“And I’ll get her there,” AC interjected, firmly buttoning his suit. “While May and Simmons try and look as much like visiting scientists as possible and infiltrate the building. You’ll need to find the Rucker's group while Skye and I take over the central computers. Well. While Skye takes over the central computers and I take out anyone who tries to stop her. She’ll bust open the doors for you once you identify them. We _cannot_ risk letting any of the experiments get out. This place is on lockdown for a reason, and the great State of Wisconsin will never forgive us if we let out an experimental bacteria that curdles their cheese.” 

It was far from his best lame pun, but it was the _effort_ that counted.

“Who’s got the getaway vehicle this time?” May asked, leaning over the briefing table and looking straight at him, and Skye knew better than to get in the way of _that_ look. Yeah, okay, May _really_ wasn’t going to let that one go. Clearly she'd used her time away to find her words again.

AC had the grace to duck his head, and maybe that was better? He kinda got… enthusiastic… sometimes, and Skye knew she didn’t know enough to call him on shit yet. Not on things like that, anyway. Hell, just trying to help him manage his love life was a little overwhelming.

Jemma challenged him once in a while but she was a scientist not a strategist and anyway, she had her own enthusiasms. Skye loved Jemma very much and she would possibly one of these days go straight to hell for her, or about half the rest of the team, but…. Once or twice during Skye’s recovery she’d started to worry about Jemma’s priorities with the GH-325, and with Skye herself. So Jemma wasn’t the best person to reel AC in when he got, well, AC-ish.

And Trip, well Trip _clearly_ wasn’t going to do it, because he was too busy coordinating his tie with Coulson’s and-- no, oh shit, he actually _had._ AC was wearing a charcoal gray suit with a kind of black and silver tie and Trip? Trip was going for the whole bright solids look in the shirt, kinda maroon, but his suit was black and his tie was silver and _oh my GOD, he actually is imprinting on Phil._ (Was that her own voice, or Clint’s, in her head? Skye wasn’t entirely sure.)

So yeah, AC was actually listening to Agent May, that was the point. And the rest of the point, well, AC was explaining it while Skye was woolgathering and staring at ruby-colored shirts stretched over broad pecs.

“No one. We’re all going in. Trip will be covering us and watching the exits and entrances from up here, and covering you as you leave with the scientists,” he said, and pointed at a building across the street from the Biotron, marked with the label “West Campus Cogeneration Facility,” which had Skye briefly wandering off into fields of speculation about what the hell cogeneration was, and what kind of facility you needed for it.

“Uh huh.” 

May clearly didn’t like the "everyone comes" argument nearly as much now that she wasn’t the one making it. AC gave her a kind of wry little smile, and Jemma raised a hand.

“Um, no offense, but… all this seems very sneaky. And I like sneaky! Sneaky is great, but… we’ll be bringing out five scientists and that seems a bit conspicuous. If we don’t want to be spotted how do you plan explain that?”

“Just like Raina,” AC said, smiling at her, and Skye felt her mouth twist without her permission. It _was_ a kinda cool idea, after all, very secret agent-y. And he’d come to her-- well, her and Trip-- to get it set up. “We’ll use peoples’ expectations against them. Agent May,” he turned, and May straightened. “Get a lab coat from Simmons, and when you're ready, please take us down. If we want to _keep_ the element of surprise, we’ll need to be moving very quickly once we hit the ground.”

As they split up, Skye looked down at her own outfit, and sighed. _For once in my life I look like a badass agent, and now I’ve got to go backtrack into flannels and a lumpy backpack._

But needs must, she supposed, and at least she had an ample selection of plaid to look through.

And anyway, she had one last contact to make before they hit the ground.

\----

Phil glanced down at the little rectangle dangling from his handkerchief pocket and sighed. He supposed the forged Centers for Disease Control ID would have to suffice, but he missed his badge. The plastic card rattling and bumping about just didn’t have the same sort of force as flipping open the leather wallet. Plus, unlike his heavy badge, the plastic, flippy thing couldn’t double as a weapon in an emergency. Most likely. Well, unless he…

_Focus, Coulson,_ he told himself sternly. Now was not the time to practice his unexpected combat weapons techniques. Although he was going to have start teaching that class again soon, if they were going to be bringing in new agents. And he really _should_ teach Trip the paperclip trick. Skye, too. Hopefully Skye would be the better Office Fu (as Clint called it) pupil. Phil shook himself back to the moment.

Ahead of him, Skye was hunched awkwardly against the wall beside a door, plainly a student juggling a heavy load of books, as she tried to input her code. What her sagging backpack was _actually_ accomplishing was hiding the small box in her hand that she’d wired into the keypad to steal any code that would grant them access to all the doors in the building. The box was a toy she’d found and immediately identified in one of the storage rooms at the Playground ( _Thankfully, not the one with my futuristic wall art._ Phil smoothed his tie at the thought), snagging it with a shout of “Mine, suckers!” Not that anyone was going to argue with her, of course, having no clue how to operate the aging tech. Except possibly Trip. _He_ could probably work it. _He_ could do everything.

_Focus, Coulson!_ He snorted a quiet laugh at himself and returned his attention to the back of Skye’s head.

“I’m in.” Skye slid the box back into her pack and touched her finger to her ear to broadcast the message to the entire team. “Ready to go play G-man, G-man?” She grinned over her shoulder, and Phil simply raised an eyebrow at her.

“Aww, come on, AC.” She zipped the bag and settled it more comfortably on her shoulder, slugging his arm lightly as he walked up to her side. “That was a pretty good one.”

“Too easy.” He straightened his shoulders and placed one hand on the knob. “You’ll have to go deeper if you want to get to my level.”

“Deeper, sure. Like _down_ a level or six.” She chuckled and punched her stolen code into the reassembled keypad. 

The locked clicked, the knob turned, and the door opened into a room with a generous bank of computers and screens and a half-dozen people of varying ages and levels of authority. Phil affixed his blandest smile (Romanov designated “You Can Trust Me, but that would be stupid; good thing you’re stupid”-- her terms were usually more descriptive than succinct) and walked in, fingers holding the badge away from his chest to draw the eyes to the rectangle of white rather than to his own face.

“If I may please have your attention.” Phil used his best crowd control voice, the one he’d learned from Fury. “My name is Senior Executive Pablo Jimenez with the CDC, and I’m going to need everyone to evacuate the building in an orderly fashion. If you would all, please, stop everything you are doing and make your way to the exits.” 

From the corner of his eye, he watched Skye slink off toward a corner, trying her best to look like an unassuming student as everyone in the room focused on Phil, mouths hanging open. He had that effect on people, as she well remembered from the first time he’d ripped open the door of her van. 

“A report came in this morning of someone admitted to the hospital with a possible infection from a microbe in the building.” He added the smile that Natasha called his _Reassuring and Trustworthy Face Number Three_. “At this time, there appears to be no serious danger of the infection spreading, but I need to bring my team in to control the building while we begin our inspection. So, if you would all please come this way…”

The six students and staff collected at the door, creating a slight backflow that he waved along until the scrum cleared, and they were all in the hall. He continued to waft them toward the exit, mostly ignoring his mouth as it continued to blather away, spilling reassurances and platitudes that were familiar from every weird mission SHIELD had ever sent him on. 

“This is all just a precaution. We’ll be finished shortly and you can all return to your normally scheduled activities. I assure you, your belongings left in the building will be attended by my staff. If you would, please, just move back from the building and give us some room to work.”

They were all out the door, and Phil waved them off with another reassuring smile before stepping back inside and activating his com. 

“They’re out, Skye. Lock the place down, so May and Simmons can do the room to room..”

____

AC had removed his com unit with a sigh, flopping into a chair where he could watch the monitors that flickered through the camera feeds from around the building. He was clearly trusting Skye to keep him up-to-date on the mission and their teammates, and wasn’t _that_ \-- okay, not an ego _stroke_ , because she knew she was damn good. More of an ego pat. Perhaps an ego scritch-under-the-chin. Either way, it made her feel surprisingly purry. Also competent and trusted. Like she was a fully-qualified Agent of SHIELD again. Like the boss’s right hand man. Er, woman. Agent. Whatever. Point is, AC was relying on her, and she was not going to let him down. 

“May and Simmons are working their way down the next hall now.” She announced it without looking up from where her fingers were flying over the keyboard, eyes never leaving the datastream across the screen. It was a strange sort of liberty, watching for the keywords Jemma had given her on the Bus so she would know what she was looking for when she saw it go by. This was her domain, where she excelled (not that this was _difficult_ , given the orderly layout of files on the system. Labs and research arranged neatly, plans of the building laid out with the individualized building systems’ controls). Give her a smooth flow of data, and she could use it to save the world. Or, well, find a bunch of scientists that were on the lam. 

Aaaaand, there it went. 

“Simmons, May, last lab on that floor.” She felt AC’s attention whip her direction like an electric current to the side of the face. Tracking back up the screen, she found the key to the security code and relayed it to May, knowing it would take a few minutes for her to get the numbers in the right order.

A rumble of acknowledgement dragged Skye’s eyes back to AC. His back was stiff, elbows resting on the arms of his chair, folded hands pressing into his bottom lip. He looked so _tired_. The pain that she’d seen after pulling him out of the theta wave machine, that had deepened after Lima, tightened the corners of his mouth, carved into the lines around his eyes. He sighed softly, and she was certain he hadn’t noticed.

My _God_ , she was tired of that look on his face! He really needed to just man up and call Clint or something. Skye was now certain that he had nothing to be afraid about just calling the man up and saying “sorry.” She wasn’t sure she’d ever actually-in-person seen someone _quite_ as in love as Clint appeared to be. AC was a lucky man. Would be a lucky man, when he finally got his head out of his ass. A very lucky man, in _deed_. And she _really_ needed to stop thinking of the words “lucky” and “AC” in the same sentence.  
Especially after the groping and clutching and, well, _humping_ \-- she’d walked in on in the tower in Ravenna flitted through her mind. _I just hope they get to meet in_ actual _private next time._

It was time and past to stop thinking about Director Coulson and his boyfriend. Clearly. She forcibly turned her attention back to AC and his Intense Eyebrows of Brooding and Morose.

“Whatcha thinking, boss?” She resisted the urge to kick his ankle, deciding that using words to bring him back to the present was a much _safer_ route. Man had reflexes, pining, and guilt winding him up lately, okay?

“How much would you like to wager that Raina has set at least one trap on that room itself?” AC reached out to poke a few of the buttons on the console in front of him, trying to find the camera in the hall where May and Jemma were making their way toward . Skye contemplated directing his attention to the laminated sheet of paper with the labels for each camera-screen combo, but thought better of it and bit her lip to stay quiet. 

Skye was opening her mouth to retort that she didn’t make obviously losing bets when the door to the control room beeped, and she nearly jumped a mile. And AC, badass as always, was on his feet with his gun drawn before the intruder’s head poked around the door.

“I’m not too late to get in on this action, am I?” Trip smiled that unphased grin, not even surprised that he was nearly _shot in the freakin’ head_. And damn, he had nerves of steel or vibranium or whatever his nerves were made from. He was as unflappable as AC. Or May. Or… nearly any of the agents she’d met. Oh.

_Time to start working on myself, clearly. Maybe I’m just supposed to go around expecting someone to point a gun at my head all the time._ And, well, the weapons pointed at her had proven to be a reasonable expectation. 

AC lowered his gun, one eyebrow quirked halfway up his forehead. “Trip, what are… Why aren’t you on the roof?” 

“Figured I’d be more useful on the ground.” Trip winked at Skye, and she tried (and failed) not to swoon. Just a bit. Damned Bond-like secret agents with their sparkling smiles and playful eyelid movement. That was another thing she needed to practice. “So how are things here?”

The crease between AC’s eyebrows reached maximum bewilderment. He turned the expression on Skye, but she just shrugged and went back to watching the monitors. Who knew why Agent Triplett did anything? Except for the part where he was clearly trying to be _just like AC._

“They’re opening the door now.” Skye pointed to her ear to indicate that she was listening and they should both join her in the land of What’s Going On Right Now and not wander off into who is wearing the sharper suit.

The announcement got AC’s eyebrows back on the mission where they belonged, and he fumbled his own com out of his pocket, activating it to say “Watch yourselves--” just a moment too late.

Trip looked at AC and AC looked at Skye when May’s voice grumbled a short, rather bored-sounding ”Damn.”

____

“May, report.” Phil nearly fumbled reholstering his gun as he dropped back into his chair and finally found the right damn button. _Why weren’t there labels on these damn things?_

The screen fuzzed and solidified to show Jemma backing away from the keypad, eyes wide and a strained, fake smile on her face.

“Doctor Rucker! You…” 

A woman entered the hall from behind the camera, her round shoulders covered in a white coat, hair cut in the classic poof-on-top-short-around-the-ears that Phil suspected was standard issue for Women of a Certain Age. Not that he’d ever been able to figure out what that age _was_. 

“Hello, Jemma.” Doctor Rucker’s voice held a brittle sort of smile, and she stepped closer to Jemma, one hand reaching out. Phil fought down the urge to scream through the coms for her to just _run_ , hoping Jemma remembered his directive to _just get Rucker talking._

Trip stepped close enough for their shoulders to bump. 

“Go cover her,” Phil told him. “Stay out of sight unless Jemma appears to be in immediate danger. Skye, switch Simmons and May to separate channels. You keep May’s open in case she needs backup. And get that door back open.”

“Can do, boss.” Skye flipped her own laptop onto the desk beside the keyboard. She tapped at the keys twice, and May’s fervent growl was cut off, letting Phil focus entirely on Jemma and Rucker’s reunion. “Working on the door. Someone’s overridden the controls, and I can’t find where it’s coming from.” 

“Jemma,” Phil kept his voice calm. “Get her talking.” He turned to Skye. “What’s going on with May?”

“She’s found the rest of the science team, all four of them.” She scowled. “Apparently they’ve been sleeping on cots in there. And they’re not very clean.”

He chose to leave it there for now; he’d try to make it up to May by finding her someone to hit soon.

“Doctor Rucker!” Simmons repeated, still smiling her bright, “I’m lying and pretending to be a _real_ spy and I’m horribly obvious” smile. Phil fought down his facepalm, hoping Trip got to her quickly. “What are you doing here? I mean, I _know_ what you’re doing here. Working on eukaryotics, clearly. Because that’s your specialty. But… what are you doing with them here?”

“Oh, Jemma!” Doctor Rucker edged closer, and Jemma backed up until her shoulder bumped the wall. “The things we’re working on right now! The things that Raina has showed us! You could do good work with us. _Real_ work. True science for the betterment of all humankind. Have you _seen_ the specimens we have to work with? They were former supersoldiers. Raina has been collecting them, those that want the power back. They’re working for her now. And they’re so _willing_! And think, Jemma! You and Fitz stabilized the serum once. I’m certain you can do it again!”

“Raina? Isn’t she… HYDRA? Does that make you HYDRA, too?”

Phil didn’t bother keeping his hand off of his face this time. _I wonder if I can get Nat to come train her. I wonder if Nat would forgive me if I did…_

“Oh please! Those apes were only interested in the destructive side of science. Centipede was seeking to take humanity _beyond_ our current limitations, to help us evolve as a species. And SHIELD, HYDRA, the University of Wisconsin, what does it matter who is paying for the research. Jemma, we can do _so much_ here! We need your help. _I_ need your help!”

“AC, I can’t get that door--”

“In a minute, Skye. Open me a channel to Trip.” Phil watched Dr. Rucker sidle another foot closer to Jemma. “Trip, keep an eye on the two of them.” He turned back to Skye. “Give me May.”

“Coulson, I’m not even kidding. They’ve been giving them nothing but coffee for the last… none of them even seem to know how long and…”

“Agent May, I’m aware that this is a _difficult_ moment.” Phil could never express his gratitude for all the years he’d practiced that bland tone with Fury. If _that_ didn’t crack him, May stood no chance. “However, I need you to see if anyone in there can help with the door code.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Director.” May’s voice got sharper. “It’s rigged to blow if we try to unlock it here. Or if you try to unlock it from there. Only the keypad outside of this room is not attached to explosives. And, according to them, if _this_ room blows, it could destabilize the entire building, either blowing it up completely or damaging the structure enough to release whatever experiments are at work in other labs.”

Phil swore quietly. “Sit tight.”

He flipped back to Jemma’s channel. “You’re doing great, Jemma. Just… try to buy me a few more minutes.”

“AC, I’ve got it!” Skye’s voice was excited, and he could hear the breath she sucked in preparing for technobabble. “The explosion has an electronic trigger, rather than a physical one. It’s actually a fairly impressive bit of coding. Well, not _that_ impressive, since I can overwrite it really easily, but still, nice enough for what it is. If I can just filter this back far enough, then I can override the whole program. It’s hooked up to a variety of explosives around the building. I _think_ I’m going to have to go one by one to defuse all of them, but I can do it from right here.”

Phil blinked at her. Multiple explosives. That was… suggestive. “Will we be able to get that door open after we get turn off all the detonators?”

“Most of them. The ones on the door itself… ehhhh.” She lifted one shoulder, still typing like mad.

“Then get going.” He patted her shoulder. “Good catch.”

“Already going.” She flashed him the quickest smile before turning back to the task at hand.

“Don’t you want to know more about that medication that is now running through your teammates’ veins?” Doctor Rucker was clutching at Jemma’s wrist on the screen. “Think of the good it could do! The lives it could save! Come _on_ , Jemma! SHIELD kept that secret just to have secrets. Raina is trying to bring it out into the open, create something that can be used for millions of people!”

Jemma twisted her arm free. “Of course I want to know. But… it was classified for a reason.” Her resolve seemed to be wavering, and Phil scowled, wondering how far her own explorations into the GH-325 had gone. This was not the time to worry about that, but Phil knew he was going to have to have that conversation with her at some point. And wouldn’t _that_ be cheerful.

“There’s no party left to force us to toe the line. This is science in its _purest_ form. Discovery for the sake of mankind.” Phil watched Rucker’s hand dip into her pocket. “I _need_ you, Jemma.” Her hand came up, and there was a syringe in it.

“Doctor Rucker! No! Get away from me!” Jemma twisted free and retreated up the hall. Unfortunately she ended up standing directly between Rucker and Trip, preventing him from getting a shot off with his Icer.

“AC!” Skye grabbed Phil’s wrist, and he was embarrassed by how hard he flinched. “Okay, the explosives on the door will blow if it’s opened from the inside. But it won’t be a very _large_ explosion. Should blow the lock, reset most of the building systems, and set off the fire alarms.”

“Which will clear the building.” Phil nodded. “To hell with it. Get ready.” He switched channels. “May, did you hear all of that?”

“We’re ready down here, Coulson.” She sniffed hard enough to be heard. “I am _more_ than ready.”

“You’ll have about one minute to get the door open after the seal blows,” Skye cut in. “And you’ll need to be pretty far back--”

“I’m aware of how to survive an exploding doorknob, Skye.” May had clearly sailed past _annoyed_ and was heading into the deeper waters of _irate._

“Trip, prepare to grab Jemma and _run_.” On the screens, there was a long moment where Phil could see Trip’s shoulders tense, watch Jemma hover with one foot in the air behind her as she prepared for another step in her escape, watched Rucker’s hand begin to reach forward with the syringe clasped tightly…

And then the floor shook and all the screens fuzzed to black.

____

“I’m trying, desperately, to refrain from something impatient and pushy right now.” AC was drumming his fingers on the desk in an irritating not-rhythm. 

Skye flicked her eyes from screen before her, up to his face, and back to the screen again as she worked, watching the Biotron’s systems reboot from the ground up. 

“You do realize that implying that you’re _not_ saying something pushy counts as pushing, right?” Seals, locks, climate control, lights… and cameras! The monitors in front of them sprang to life, showing the rapid zombie-shuffling of the students and staff in the halls as they made their way toward the exits, most of them covered in ill-fitting white coats and various pieces of protective gear. She wondered how many of them wandered out of the building still in goggles and gloves at the end of the day without the “hurry it along” encouragement of the flashing lights and blaring alarms. She wouldn’t be surprised to find that the masks most of them were wearing had been left on purpose; an explosion in a building like this might let out mad swine-cow flu disease or mutant cheese-making bacteria or something. She tugged the collar of her flannel shirt higher, nearer to her mouth and nose.

“Excellent!” AC’s enthusiasm over functioning cameras was a bit excessive. In fact, his enthusiasm since Trip had entered the control room had been edging toward over the top. And he still hadn’t even gotten to go out and get his hands on-- _Stop. Delete._ He hadn’t even gotten to go out, find Clint, and say a _nice, respectable, child-safe hello_. Maybe this was just because they had nearly blown up the building. AC probably liked blowing up buildings. Probably satisfied his need for dramatics. Explosions would go with the suit and the Bus and the Lola and the bugfuck crazy boyfriend who jumped out of windows. _Boom_.

“There’s May and the…” Skye pointed to one screen, unable to complete the sentence she’d begun. From the corner of her eye, she watched AC do his little head tilt. “Sir… why does she… why are they…?”

“They’re… holding hands.” He sounded as stunned as she felt.

The entire little string of scientists were latched together, hand to hand, being dragged along by a stone-faced May. They slithered through the legitimate occupants of the building, looking for all the world like some strangely-dressed preschool class playing Follow the Leader on the way to the bathroom. Or was that Centipede? Skye had vague recollections of being dragged down the hall, weaving around, trying to place her feet exactly in the footsteps of the person in front of her…

And that really wasn’t important right now.

“There’s Rucker.” AC leaned forward, pointing to the image of her perfectly-pressed coat tugging viciously on a slender form that could only be Jemma. Thankfully, there was no sign of the syringe she’d been holding before May blew the door, and Jemma was on her feet and struggling and didn’t outwardly appear to have been shot up with alien juice or mind control serum or… whatever had been in that thing.

“Trip!” Skye saw him heading through the crowd, trying to find Jemma, clearly. Which was probably like looking for a, well, a scientist in a laundry pile of lab coats. With other scientists still wearing them. Well, it’s not like she had a lot of time to work on her metaphors right then!

May’s pop-bead string of scientists broke apart as she dragged them around the last corner toward an exit. One of them, a slim, dark-haired girl that could only be Sephie, sprang loose from the middle of the line and rushed the door, hands reaching toward Jemma’s back. Trip had just made the door, fingers brushing Jemma’s arm, before he was flung out of the way by a hurtling Sephie. The three women all tumbled through the door, Trip tumbled to the ground, and a snort of amusement tumbled out of AC.

“It appears his achilles heel is small women in a hurry.” Skye didn’t think she was supposed to overhear the mutter. She shot him a look, but didn’t comment. This was probably about their weird new suit competition or whatever was going with both of them.

“Okay, they’re all clear of the building.” AC turned to her with a satisfied smirk. “Let’s get out there and pro--”

“Hello, Agent Coulson. Skye.” A soft voice from the doorway had them both snapping around and reaching for weapons.

\----

“We’re not taking them on the Bus, and that’s final,” Melinda hissed into her open com, and hoped she was coming off as firm and not half as frazzled as she felt. 

Theoretically, the “them” she was referring to could hear her saying it-- she had the tallest, skinniest (and oiliest) of them by the elbow and was dragging him along. He was, in turn, pulling along a daisy chain of stumbling, babbling ex-SHIELD scientists.

She’d been in underground lairs containing multiple super soldiers and assorted explosives that had been less discombobulating than those few moments being locked into a sealed experimental lab with four overwrought scientists who appeared to have been napping on cots in the corner, were hopped up on more coffee than an army of Coulsons, and _hadn’t been able to shower in days_. 

“They’d never survive it. If you think I’m kidding, you can house them all in your office, Coulson, and see how long you last.” Not that she thought he was going to argue with her; she hadn’t heard much from him or Skye since the seals blew, and could only hope they were all right. _Theoretically, the man can take care of himself. He_ won’t _, but he will take care of Skye. If he doesn’t, I’ll plant a genomics expert in his boudoir._

If transporting them wouldn't involve the Bus, she’d be more tempted to try and keep them; a handful of scientists could rattle around in the Playground forever, poking at the scientific detritus of the 20th century and babbling a mile a minute while-- hopefully-- helping Leo Fitz.

But they’d never make it there alive. 

She’d see to that.

So they were going to have to find somewhere else to stay, but meanwhile she needed to get her science herd someplace defensible, and away from the milling crowds still spilling from the Biotron. They were still _far_ too close for her comfort to the building to be safe in case of any real threat, like an explosion. A bigger explosion. Which was yet a very real possibility.

When the seals on the door had blown, she’d pushed the scientists out before her-- herded them like she was some kind of damned sheepdog (and that, like so many other things she'd done recently, was _not_ in the job description that either Fury or Coulson had given her.) They, at least, had the grace to _move_ once they realized they were free from the clean room they’d been stuffed into. And they moved _fast_ \-- if she’d had the time, Melinda would have spared a moment to wonder just whether Raina and Dr. Rucker had been using methods other than sleep deprivation to persuade the scientists to join them, or if they were naturally skittish.

Rucker had disappeared by the time she and her string of scientists reached the door, and Jemma with her. Trip had gone after them. Sephina Day had pushed her way past May and out the door, screaming for Jemma. That was what Melinda wanted to be doing, as well. Unfortunately, she needed to get these damn fool scientists to safety before they ran themselves straight back into a trap.

“Triplett, Simmons, do you copy? Where are you? You-- _move_.” 

This last was directed to the back of the large blonde undergrad in front of her, who wasn’t taking the whole evacuation thing seriously. He glanced over his shoulder and down at her, doe-eyed in the sun, and slowed even further. 

Melinda just kept on going, and left him curling up around the kidney she’d elbowed. The scientists wove around him like a cha-cha line through a wedding dance.

“Triplett, Simmons, _do you_ \--”

“Rucker pulled Simmons' com out, May, but I’ve got her in sight,” Trip’s voice came over the coms, clipped and stuttering-- _he’s running fast_. “And Rucker. She’s drag-- fuck that shit, no you don’t!” 

Melinda caught a sudden glimpse of them over by one end of the greenhouses-- just in time to see Triplett catching Dr. Rucker by the arm and yanking, sending her down to the ground and Jemma spinning away like she’d just been the caboose in a particularly vicious game of crack the whip. 

Triplett somehow managed to catch Jemma by the waist before she fell too, spinning her straight into his body and tucking her under his arm as he went to draw on Dr. Rucker. _Definitely as annoyingly smooth as Phil was when he was that young_ , she thought.

“I’ve got Jemma and am securing Rucker,” Trip announced over coms. “And Dr. Day just arrived.”

“Copy that,” Melinda said. “I’ve found us shelter, south of the greenhouses. Trailers across the street. Meet me there.” She pushed her charges ahead of her and towards a little collection of trailers and trees next to a huge brick facility impaled with steam pipes. 

It was cooler under the canopy, and quieter. The large portly man and his shorter, equally portly companion, collapsed onto the curb and stuck their heads between their knees. Tall and greasy leaned against another tree, forehead-first, panting.

“We… safe… now?” He asked, and Melinda _knew_ she was going to regret her next words, even as they came out of her mouth.

“Yes,” she said.

Because she was an idiot.

The tackle hit her at waist height barely a moment later, and she went down hard, chin scraping against the asphalt. _Never ever ever ever say yes_ she thought, and came up spitting, already twisting herself to kick her attacker in the groin. 

“Need help, under-- oof!” she got off, before a large fist got her in the solar plexus. And it _was_ fists and legs and torsos, not coherent humans-- there was too much confusion to be certain which limbs belonged where. Behind her, she thought she heard tall-and-gangly shout, and one of the goons, but there were at least three men on her, and who knew how many trying to drag off the scientists. “Under the trees. Trip please--”

Melinda was cut off by a curse from Trip.

“She _bit_ me!” he yelled. “Day, get her-- damnit! Stay. You, Jemma, stay with her. I’ll get Rucker.”

Well, no help from that direction. She'd give Coulson this one-- he'd listened when it counted. If she or Triplett had been waiting back at the Bus, these scientists would have been halfway to Chicago by now. Their team was just too damn small to take out this kind of opposition, but what choice did they have?

_I guess I’ll be handling this myself,_ Melinda thought, just as she managed to get a handle on the necks of two of her attackers. They went down with satisfying little grunts, and so did the next one, as he turned to fight her. The _fourth_ , now, was a bit more of a problem, he seemed to have some rudimentary knowledge of a martial art, though his form was sloppy enough that she couldn’t identify what exactly it was supposed to be.

Still, it took her a moment or two to get him down, and by the time she was free… the other attackers had been taken out by the gangly red-haired geek, who had one in a headlock, and the two rotund ones. The darker one, a man, was holding his arm and beginning to turn ashen, but his pasty-skinned companion looked practically euphoric.

“Ma’am,” that was the man with the injured arm-- Dr. Delgado, May noted, looking more closely at the embroidered scrawl on his dirtied lab coat. “Are we running again?”

“Yes,” Melinda said, because she could already see a few backup goons spewing forth from the trailer. “That way--” she turned to point, and sighed. Several large black vans had pulled up between her and the crowd at the Biotron, and the doors were already slamming open as they screeched to a halt. Each disgorged two men in black, ball caps, masks-- and guns. A few of them looked familiar-- Raina must have had a field day at Mercenaries ‘R’ Us, shopping on Quinn's dime. “Well,” she sighed, “I guess we go through them, too.”

“Oh. At what point do we just give up?” Delgado asked her. 

Melinda sighed and opened her mouth to answer, though she had no idea what was going to come out beyond a snarl.

And then… and _then_... the man closest to her sprouted an arrow through his arm, and went down screaming. The guy on his flank started to round on his fallen buddy,and he turned straight into the arrow that went through his hand, as if the archer had shot it into open space knowing its target would come to meet it.

Arrows were flying thick now, and Melinda reached out instinctively and pulled one of the goons out of them, into her own orbit-- where she could pummel him repeatedly. 

“What the hell?” She grouched into her com when she had a moment to spare, “Why didn’t anyone tell me we picked up Barton?”

\----

 

Raina stood there in the door, all prim and proper and painted and wrapped in a dark blue satin dress with a flocked floral print. Her hands were folded neatly in front of her, and she didn’t _look_ like she could block the door. The two giant men that flanked her in the doorframe, however, clearly _could_.

“Nice to see you both again.” Raina’s painted mouth curled up into a sweet little cupid’s bow smile that Skye itched to slap off her damned face. “I do wish you’d been willing to do all of this the easy way. But…” She sighed, which Skye felt was just melodramatic. “I need your Doctor Simmons, and I’m sure you would both love to get in my way. So I will ask you to please stay here while my associates and I go collect her.”

“What do you want with Simmons?” Phil’s hand hadn’t shifted off the grip of his gun, but he hadn’t yet drawn it. Skye glanced at him, noticing how his eyes were on the two hulking goons, ready to move at a flinch from either one. 

“She had her hands on both of you.” Raina’s eyebrow quirked. _Are you really so dense?_ that eyebrow asked. “I need to know what she found out.” Her other eyebrow shifted with the first to say _And now I’m the one in control._ “And you, Skye, you’ll come back to me willingly, in the end. I have allll those answers you’re searching for. About your parents. Your _family_. What you’re becoming. I can be very, very patient. But you… you don’t have that much time.”

“Not going to happen, Raina.” AC’s shoulder flexed as he prepared to draw.

“Ah-ah, Coulson!” One of the goons raised his rifle blandly while Raina backed out of the room, still speaking. “The interior keypad here is hooked up to the same explosives as that one you blew down in the labs. But this one, well, it’s wired right into the largest bomb. If you try to blow it open, you’ll blow the whole building. And, while I would regret anything happening to the two of you, I’m sure _you_ would regret the things you’d be releasing on the general public much, much more.”

The door swung shut, Raina’s smiling face appearing in the small window as it did. She waved once and turned to breeze away.

“Coulson! Where are you?” May was practically screaming over the coms now.

“Skye and I are going to be… slightly delayed.” AC smiled sardonically at Skye, and she fought off the urge to hug the man. Only he could ever be so calm in the face of being locked in an exploding room. “Get the rest of the team to safety. And keep everyone back from the building, just in case we make a miscalculation here.” He turned to Skye. “Options, Agent Skye.”

She blinked owlishly at him for a minute or two and then dropped back to her laptop, scrolling for… something. _Come on, give me something. Anything. That bitch is_ not _winning this round. I am not staying here one more minute. And I’m not… I won’t go to her. I can’t. I just…_

“Skye?” AC had his gentle voice on, clearly thinking she was heading toward hysterics. And, well, he wasn’t _wrong_. “Skye, no. You know what we talked about. She will say _anything_ to control you. Whatever you need to hear to do what she wants, she’ll say it. You don’t need her. We’ll find your answers.”

“Thanks, boss.” When did her voice get so croaky? Had she turned half toad when she wasn’t looking? “I…” She forgot what she was going to say next, looked again at what the computer was telling her and snorted. And then she giggled. And then the _real_ laughter started, and she couldn’t have stopped if she’d wanted to. AC grabbed her shoulder.

“Skye!” And, okay, now he was getting worried, and she should really get herself under control before he took dramatic action. Like… slapping her or something. You know, to knock the hysteria out of her. He grabbed her other shoulder, and she took a deep, soothing breath, looking up into his worried eyes with a smile before dissolving into little titters and snorts.

“So you remember when we were saying that this building is on lockdown, no connection between the labs?” She was probably hard to understand, but he simply nodded. “Well, that’s only true of the labs.”

“What are you talking about?” His fingers tightened, and she wasn’t sure if he was trying to offer her comfort or keep her from floating right out of her seat. Either way, it was appreciated. 

“The vents. The _vents_!” She pointed directly over her head. “They’re connected to the same system as the hallway. Just a quick crawl up and over and we’re out of here.”

AC looked up at the vent, down at Skye, and back up the vent before shaking his head and sighing. “I’m not a monkey. Or a…” he trailed off and smiled, small and private. “Anyway, let me give you a boost. Go unlock the door and let’s get out of here.”

Five minutes later, she was trying not to sneeze while pretending to be offended by AC walking so far away from her as they stepped out of the still-smokey Biotron into the afternoon sun. She was shedding dust from her hair, her jeans, and the shoulders and tail of her flannel shirt. AC was muttering about needing to find out who was responsible for cleaning the vents and issuing a reprimand ( _You’re not_ really _with the CDC, AC_ ). 

They both unmuted their coms as they exited, both wincing at the volume of May’s grunts and shouts. AC started looking around for the location of the fight, but May’s next words had him freezing in place, one foot raised to take a step, mouth open to ask a question and no sounds coming out.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me we picked up Barton?”


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Practice makes perfect.

The voices in his com were so much static, and Phil couldn’t have picked out a single word if he’d tried. Skye was speaking to him, but he could only watch the shape of her lips, unable to comprehend. And then one sentence caught his hearing.

“According to Hawkeye...” Skye said it so casually, as if she didn’t know that the name alone sent a bolt of heat searing through Phil’s chest. As if she hadn’t seen Phil demolish his office as a response to a single touch from that man’s lips. As if she hadn’t seen the, er, _brushing of lips_ itself. 

“AC?” She had clearly been talking the whole time his mind had flashed back to a ruined tower in Ravenna. He pulled his vision back to the present to find Skye watching him with a far-too-knowing smile. “According to Hawkeye, some of the the action has shifted straight south. May has the science team heading toward shelter, and they picked up a few aggressors. He’s dealing with any that are giving her and her labcoats any trouble.” 

He opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out, tongue still so hung up on “we picked up Barton” that he was certain that the only sound that would squeeze out was a whine.

_I_ wish _my tongue was hung up…_ And this was genuinely not the time for those thoughts. But Clint was _right there_. Nearby. Somewhere. Probably on top of a building. Maybe looking down at him right now.

“He’s here?” Phil barely recognized his own voice. Even he could hear the raw edge of panic, of hopefulness, of terror all bleeding together and spilling from his lips. Skye’s expression was one part worry and one part amusement. “What’s he… Why’s he… Did you know he’d be here?”

“I didn’t want to say anything before.” She bit her lip. “He wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it, but I knew he was going to try.”

“I…” Phil’s instincts were fighting. The urge to go looking for Clint’s perch (that building, over there. Perfect sightlines, good cover) warred with the need to cover May until she got the non-combatants to safety, which was dueling it out with worry for Trip, who was swearing over the coms, and Simmons, who was suspiciously silent. 

“So we need to get Hawkeye on the regular channel. Think you can run this over to him?” Skye held out a spare in-ear casually. As if she wasn’t the logical one to go, get out of the immediate action. “I’ll see if I can’t get a track on Trip’s com and figure out which way the others went. Clint should be…”

“I can find him.” Phil’s hand reached out without his direction to take the com from her fingers, cradling it in his palm like something precious for a moment before he slipped it into his pocket. “I’ll… just be a moment.”

He turned to run across the campus, knowing he only had a few minutes before he had to be Director Coulson again, but unable to resist the chance to find out if Phil still had a chance with Clint.

____

 

Clint shifted impatiently, scope of Trip’s rifle trained on the main entrance to the Biotron. Trip had seemed fairly cheerful about the chance to get to the ground and join the mission in progress. Clint knew _he_ was cheerful, because he was about to get a chance to see Phil. Not Director Coulson. Not Boss, Sir, or that guy he used to be involved with. _Phil_. His own Phil. 

He licked his lips and put his eye back to the scope.

“Goodgoddamnit!” An explosion rattled the building across the street, and people started streaming out through the doors.

Clint watched the rapidly gathering crowd for a familiar face. He got it when Agent Triplett came popping out the door, clearly pursuing a trio of the labcoats around the corner. And then May appeared with a line of labcoats behind her, all holding hands as they were dragged through the crowd toward the dubious safety of a line of trees across the street. Some tall dude got in her way and, instead of moving like anyone with a sense of self-preservation would do, he just blinked slowly at her. May’s reply was short, brutal, and beautifully efficient.

Clint was on his feet, bow drawn to provide them cover, before they were across the street. Phil wouldn’t be happy if Clint went and let them all get captured now, would he? And if Clint could offer a little reminder of who he was, why he was here, and how much _better_ he was than May, well, nothing wrong with a little bit of territory-marking, right?

Moments after he’d watched May beat the last of her assailants into the ground, Skye slithered out the front door of the Biotron, Phil hot on her heels. 

_Hot_ was clearly the operative word here. Because damn those shoulders filled out the suit jacket to utter perfection. So he’d been in a building that might have exploded a little, clearly been delayed from exiting by _something_ , and was in the middle of a mission; man didn’t have a hair out of place. That kind of competence, the immaculate suit in the middle of hell kind of ability, _did things_ to Clint. Well, did things to his pants, at least. 

He shouldered his bow and turned to run. Sure, he could see pretty well from up here, but surely he had just a _minute_ to get down there and say a casual hello. With his tongue. Well, obviously, since tongues were required for the ells in “hello.” But maybe he could, ya know, accidentally stick it down Phil’s throat. In a casual way. Just a little. 

His pocket buzzed as he trotted down the stairs, and, fishing out his phone, he found a message from Skye: _Heading to the greenhouses to search for Jemma. Tell AC when you see him._

Clint took to jumping over the last half of each flight of stairs, heart pounding in his ears.

____

 

Phil smoothed his tie and his hair and began to wend through the gathered crowd of half-panicked scientists, gawking students, and slowly-gathering faculty and staff, slowly but steadily making his way toward a giant building whose towers soared above the campus. He’d studied the campus with eyes trained by SHIELD’s greatest sniper during the planning portion of this op, and had settled on the West Campus Cogeneration Facility as the best perch for eyes up high. If it was the best, it was the only place Clint could possibly be.

What the _hell_ was Clint doing, crashing their mission? Had Skye brought him in? Did she think that they _needed_ the World’s Greatest Marksman? Or was she back to playing matchmaker, trying to show Phil that _he_ , well, needed the World’s Greatest Marksman? _Hell yes I do!_ But why had Clint agreed? Was he worried about Skye? Bored? Trying to help with the HYDRA problem?

_I won’t bother you again,_ Clint had said. So why was he here now?

Or… could Clint possibly have had second thoughts about his rather _dramatic_ exit from the tower in Ravenna? Could he be there, in Wisconsin, on a roof… just to see Phil?

_I won’t bother you again-- for my sake._

Had Clint changed his mind? Had he forgiven Phil? Decided to give him another chance?

_Reasons don’t matter._ This was Phil’s chance to finally fix things. To say all the words he thought and felt and meant and… He couldn’t freeze this time. He’d had such a narrow window in Ravenna, and nothing would come out. That would _not_ happen again. It would come out, or he’d… No. No “or.” He was getting the words out.

“Clint, I love you.” Phil tested the words and he smoothly edged people out of his way. “I love you, and I’m sorry I was an asshole.”

A pair of tall, shouldery students stopped in the middle of their excited jabbering about the explosion to gape at Phil. He glared them out of his path and tried again.

“Clinton Francis Barton, I love you. I _am_ yours.” He crossed the road, still hunting for the right way to say the simplest thought he’d ever had. “I love you and I miss you and if I weren’t in the middle of trying to rescue several of SHIELD’s best and brightest and trying to capture an enemy with some desperately-needed intel, I would…” He paused, mid-step up to curb across the street and shook his head. “No. I should leave that part out for now. Sounds like I only want sex.” 

He breathed deeply through his nose, trying to steady his nerves before he resumed walking, hand stuffed in his jacket pocket, fingers gently stroking the com that would soon be touching Clint. “Babe, I want you ba…” He gulped. Best not to finish that sentence even in his own head.

“Clint, I love you.” Still too timid, too ragged.

He took a deep breath and said it louder, putting the full force of his aching heart into the words. 

“Clint Barton, I love you!”

Every nerve shifted to code red as he found himself clutched tightly around his waist. He was spun roughly around, ending up pressed tightly against something warm and hard and... Something hard that was Clint’s gorgeous, warm, breathing, perfect chest. Sparkling, _glowing_ eyes that shifted from brilliant blue to flaming green under the sun stared into Phil’s from both far too close and much too far away. Phil tipped forward, melting under the heat of that gaze, the burn of his own desire to be close… closer.

“Hey, babe. I love you, too.”

Phil opened his mouth to say something intelligent. He was absolutely _certain_ he had the second part of that speech planned out. And he should probably ask Clint what the _hell_ he was doing here. But his mouth, in an astonishing act of rebellion, simply murmured a deep, fervent “Thank God” and attached itself to Clint’s pliant, welcoming lips.

Clint returned the kiss with an enthusiasm that took Phil’s breath away. Phil’s hands roved about until they found a grip on a a couple of straps, and he clung, trying to keep himself upright while he attempted to get reaquainted with Clint’s mouth. Tongue. Tonsils…

“Oh, fuck, babe.” Clint slurped himself free, forehead dropping to Phil’s shoulder as he hung on and panted and Phil tried to remember how to speak. “Fuck, I’ve missed you. And then Fury brought that letter.”

“So _that’s_ where that damn thing went!” Phil’s legs went unexpectedly weak, and he clung to Clint’s… _everything_ to stay upright. “I searched all over for that damn thing. Should have known. Goddamnit, Nick!” He slid one arm around Clint’s waist, stretching back toward his mouth. 

“‘Call me,’ you said.” Clint grinned wolfishly, leaning out of reach. “Too much to talk about in there for just a call. Seriously, Phil. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking you wouldn’t want… Didn’t…” Phi sighed, trying to distract himself by launching at Clint’s mouth again.

“Hangonhangon!” Clint slipped free from Phil’s embrace. “Did you mean it? Everything you said in there?”

“Of course I meant it, babe.” Phil smiled crookedly. “I’ve been trying to find the damn thing to send to you. After Ravenna... When… when did you get it?”

“Nick showed up when I got home from Italy.” Clint stepped closer, reaching out to wrap Phil close again. “Figures he couldn’t have shown up _before_ I went and made an ass of myself in front of you.”

“No, babe.” Phil felt himself relaxing as Clint’s arms tightened across his back, fingers digging into the back of his suit coat. “Never that. You… you didn’t know how I felt. And you had to…”

“Shut up and kiss me, _sir_.” Clint’s grin moved closer. “Just one more for luck, and we’ll talk when we’ve gotten this shit wrapped up, yeah?”

“Of course.” Phil revelled in the feeling of Clint’s lips against his own. He pulled away to whisper the words while he still had a close-up view of how they made Clint’s gorgeous eyes sparkle, his pupils expand. “I love you, babe.”

“Looks like Skye is in trouble.” Clint glanced over Phil’s shoulder, and they both sighed. Mission to complete. They were damned professionals. Phil was the boss of this operation. Stuff, stuff, and bullshit, all of which was to say that they needed to disentangle and get back to work. 

“Here.” Phil fumbled the com unit out of his pocket and pressed it into Clint’s palm, fingers lingering to rub tiny circles into the soft skin on the inside of his wrist. “Get on the main channel and let’s get this dealt with.”

“See you when we’re done, babe!” Clint pressed in for one more bump of lips to lips, short and sloppy and so familiar Phil ached with it. “And Phil?”

Phil turned back, gun in hand.

“It is so good to see you.”

Same as the almost-last words Clint had said in Ravenna before launching himself out of a window and away. Away from the tower, away from Phil. _Away_. And there he went again. Was he… staying gone? Coming back? Was the whole thing just some incredible fantasy? A hallucination of how Phil so desperately _wished_ Ravenna had gone? Phil wanted to look back, see if Clint was there, see if he could read what Clint had meant by that, but Skye was in trouble, and who knew where the rest of his team had ended up.

He had to get the shaking in his hands under control and assume that, if May had been reporting Barton, then Barton must actually exist right here in the Midwest.

____

Clint watched Phil slither into the action as if he hadn’t just taken a brief timeout for Clint to reacquaint himself with the flavor of his tongue. A stomp to the instep of a goon and pistol-butt to the face of another, and two girls in labcoats were free and running for safety. And that? Should not have been as hot as it was. Or maybe Clint just shouldn’t be thinking about how hot Phil was. Or… Fuck!

Shaking his head to clear a sudden fantasy of Phil in his kevlar vest and nothing else, Clint followed him toward the greenhouses where he’d last seen Skye heading. He relayed the information to May and Trip and started looking around for a few more Goons ‘R’ Us discount bin henchmen to beat on. There was suddenly a _lot_ of nervous energy he felt the need to work off.

He started jogging toward the action, heading toward the rooftops to get the best line on what was happening. But not the building he’d been on before. No, that one raised him much too high. Better stick to the greenhouses. Stay near the ground. Near Phil, the man who _loved_ him.

\----

_Thank god-- the girls are safe, at least_ Skye thought, watching through the glass walls of the greenhouse as Jemma half-dragged Sephina away and straight into the waiting arms of Antoine Triplett. Through the streaked and misted panes, they looked like a watercolor or a chalk scene left in the rain, two small women flanking a tall man as they moved into the distance, disappearing into the melting splotches that marked the crowd gathering around the Biotron. 

After leaving AC to go in search of Clint’s ass-- of Clint. Just Clint. No body parts need come into it. After leaving AC to go _hand off a comm unit_ , she’d ducked through the crowd herself, looking for Jemma and Sephina, since Trip had been somewhere chasing Dr. Rucker. Not finding them in the crowd, she’d begun to wend her way through the greenhouses themselves, checking anywhere big enough to house two fairly small scientists.

It had been in the second greenhouse that she’d seen figures, moving parallel to her, the next set of greenhouses over. No small number of them, either; just her dumb luck she’d find the Goon Staging Grounds themselves, on accident. Finding Jemma and Dr. Day rose to new levels of urgent-- they needed someone who knew how to fight watching them, as long as Raina and her crew were around. They were gonna get Skye, kind of by default, but she’d do until the bigs guns came along.

She’d only just spotted them, huddled on the ground outside the greenhouse she was in, when Trip came to collect them.

_Yay. No heroics needed from me today._

Skye rested her forehead against the glass for a moment, breathing in hard and holding until her ribcage shuddered before allowing herself to exhale. _Okay. Time to move. Find my team, get my--_ “Holy shit!” 

Gunfire shredded the brassica beds next to her, and Skye dropped, diving under the raised beds in the center of the greenhouse. Her elbows and knees moved on instinct, army-crawling her down the line, over and under the struts of the metal bedding frames, around the hoses. Kale rained down like confetti from the edges of the bed. 

Whoever was doing the firing, they weren’t walking down the aisle yet-- unfortunately. If they kept _coming_ , Skye figured she’d have a chance at shooting their calves with her Icer-- or just driving a seed dibber through their boot.

_There!_ A pane of glass was open-- or missing, maybe-- and Skye didn’t think, she just shoved herself out from under the bed and _leapt_ for it, hands coming down in the massed arabidopsis in front of the open window, and tucking her into a roll straight through it. She’d hit the ground outside and curled back into a crouch before she had time to process what she’d done. _Huh. Maybe I_ have _developed a few of the ol’ spy instincts, after all_. Had it been Ward, or May, who’d taught her that trick? 

The unknown someone in the greenhouse-- some _ones_ , Skye now saw, and thank god she’d gotten out when she did, because they’d been coming from _both_ sides, had just stopped firing and were starting to move. Any moment, they’d look out and find her, still crouched in an empty cold frame, its face exposed to the open window.

Another leap-and-roll took her over the high back edge of the cold frame, into a narrow dirt path that ran next to the second greenhouse. She flattened herself and took half a moment to look around.

No conveniently open windows in the empty greenhouse. At the end of the row of cold boxes was what looked like a generator or an HVAC or some kind of large blower, and beyond that was a little door to the glass-covered corridor that formed the spine of the greenhouses. No go that way-- shadows were already converging on the door. The other way was… was….

_What the hell is it with me and fences these days? _At least this one was chain link, though it was about seven feet high. Still, it was her best bet. She took one last look behind her-- _well, that was a bad idea. C’mon knees, I’ll buy you the nicest kneepads when we get out of this.___

__“Skye!”_ _

__It was Jemma._ _

__And Sephina._ _

__Jemma was working on the gate’s padlock while Sephina waved and pointed behind Skye like _yeah, Sephina, I know they’re behind me, jeez, I can hear the door opening and-- oh, yay, there are bullets.__ _

__There was-- shit, there was also a big, brawny guy exploding from the greenhouse and rounding on the two girls, and he was also wearing a lab coat and it was billowing open, revealing both a red t-shirt with a huge white W, and an assortment of handguns in addition to the one he was pointing at them._ _

__“ _Jemma!_ ” Skye cried._ _

__And then the man went down, clutching his kneecap._ _

__Apparently AC wasn’t necessarily bothering with the icer this afternoon._ _

__“Cover me,” he said to Jemma, and pushed her out of the way so that he could work on the padlock. Jemma ended up with the gun-- _oh please let that one be the icer_ and a look like she’d just seen a clown streak by in nothing but its wig, red nose, and large shoes. _ _

__“But sir--” she protested, or so Skye thought-- it was hard to tell over the sound of breaking glass and running goon behind her. She stumbled into a crouch and ran for the gate._ _

__“Hey,” AC said, as she hit the gate and pulled. His voice was doing a light amused thing, like he was just _floating_ through the op, and she felt herself grin back despite the goon headed at her. “Just a moment now.” Then his fingers gave a twist and the gate flew open, scattering Jemma and Sephina. _ _

__Skye tumbled through, and AC caught her by the waist and spun her to face the approaching-- oh._ _

__“They’ve multiplied,” she muttered, but she was drawing and aiming her icer as she did it. Only two of them, and with her and AC and Jemma-- oh. Jemma’d dropped the icer when the gate hit her, knocking her into Sephina. She was currently untangling herself, but for the moment neither of them were going to be of use._ _

___This op has been hell on Jemma,_ Skye had a moment to think, as she braced herself._ _

__“Look,” said one of the now-four goons, putting up his handgun and trying to look friendly (he overcompensated and hit “serial killer” with astounding accuracy), “just give us the girls, and we can all go away alive.” His three friends weren’t bothering with friendly, nor were they bothering to pretend they were doing anything other than aiming for kneecaps._ _

__And at that moment, Skye knew something inside her had finally completely snapped, or perhaps slid into place, because there was no longer any real surprise left in her lungs, and the pounding in her brain dropped into mere background noise. Her only reaction was:_ _

___That’d be a lot scarier if two of you didn’t look like a narc’s idea of co-eds, and your buddy wasn’t in a set of overalls._ _ _

__Seriously._ _

___Over_ alls._ _

__Beside her, AC snorted._ _

__“That’d be a lot more effective as a threat,” he said, “if you weren’t surrounded. You may want to consider putting the weapons down.”_ _

__And sure enough, Melinda May, her lab coat flying behind her like it was some kind of superhero cape, and Antoine Triplett still looking suave and deadly in his black suit, were stepping out of the greenhouse through the busted doorway, and the two of them had no less than four guns pointed at the goons._ _

__“Huh,” said Friendly Goon, whose sweatshirt had a large Badger (also in a sweatshirt) rampant on the front, fists upraised. _At this point, you’d all be less conspicuous in BDUs._ “Okay. You win. Guess we’ll just have to go _through_ you.” And he grinned a grin as sharp-toothed as the animal on his sweatshirt, and prepared to, well… to ram them, Skye guessed._ _

__And he-- or at any rate one of his companions-- might have made it, too, if a large, black-clad man hadn’t dropped down on his head just as he made the gate._ _

__Clint Barton was already reaching behind him as he came up, and snagging Overalls Guy around the neck, dropping him as if he were slinging a large potato sack._ _

__The biggest of the four was on Skye, headed for Jemma and Sephina and freedom, and she was side-stepping, her hip tilting up, shoulders hunching, and he was rolling over her, heavy and hot and disgustingly sweaty where she was grabbing at his wrist--_ _

__And then he was down, writhing on the ground where she’d thrown him, and Jemma was fumbling the icer up to cover him. Beyond her, AC had long ago taken care of the other problem._ _

__“Well damnit, I miss _all_ the fun today,” Trip said, as he and May arrived. She was as blank-faced as Skye’d ever seen her, and little alarm bells started to go off in her head. She hit her mental snooze button-- time to examine that later. Trip looked nearly as delighted as Skye felt, and that was rising fast, and hitting the falling adrenaline now that it was clear they’d taken out the last of Raina’s troops. (Raina’s supply was oddly inexhaustible-- was it Quinn’s money that bought them, or? Skye filed that away for later.) _ _

__“Out of practice, Trip,” Clint said, grinning at him. “Gotta get you back in shape.”_ _

__“Damnit, Barton,” Trip returned, grabbing his hand and holding on. “No one warned me running after this guy was this much work.” He jerked his head at AC, who was looking, well… not so much like the cat that had swallowed the canary, more like the cat that had swallowed the entire _aviary_._ _

__Everyone was beaming at each other, really, Jemma and Skye and Clint and AC and Trip-- everyone except Agent May, who just looked exhausted, and Sephina, who collapsed._ _

__“Perhaps,” Melinda May said, kneeling down to help her, “we can get her out of here, and round up the rest of the people we actually came here to save?”_ _

__Well. Yeah. Skye supposed they could do that._ _

__\----_ _

__There were faint noises in the distance, that slowly resolved themselves into sirens, lots of them, coming closer and closer. Skye didn’t have much time to pay attention, busy as she was binding scraps of her plaid shirt around Doctor Delgado’s arm. Slings went around the neck, right? It didn’t look right, somehow, the way she was doing it._ _

__Both she and the doctor were staring down at her latest effort, which had somehow gone all infinity-loopy, when the campus police came up behind them and weebled:_ _

__“Back away, Miss.”_ _

__Skye put her hands up and backed, trying her best to project an air of _I belong right here don’t worry about me.__ _

__“She’s just helping--” Dr. Delgado started, and for his trouble received a sharp:_ _

__“ _You too, mister_.” The sling fell to the ground as the doctor’s hands shot into the air, and Skye winced, watching his face crumple in pain as he complied._ _

__“He needs an ambulance,” she said, trying for her best smooth voice. “His arm’s broken, I think.” This got her another once-over, and then a once-over for the doctor. The cop was _young_ , barely older than her. Hell, possibly younger-- how young did they recruit cops, anyway? And he wanted to agree, she thought, wanted to back down, but there was the whole _crowd_ and now, she could see, a whole boatload of other cops, leaving the protective ring of their cars and all of them, clearly, uncertain whether to herd the crowd, barricade themselves, or wade in and start helping. And the freckle-faced kid in blue in front of her had no idea what to do._ _

___Come on, does this look like a riot to you?_ she thought at him, projecting innocence with all the ease of someone of the constantly-talking-their-way-out-of-trouble class. She fought back impatience, because it wasn’t like the kid had her kind of training or experience, to know how to react to this._ _

___Training and experience. Right. Like I’m a veteran, or something. That’s me, right there._ _ _

__They stared at each other for a long moment, and she realized she was sighing at the same time the cop sighed._ _

__“What’s going on?” the cop asked, lowering his weapon._ _

__“Biocontainment failed,” a voice said, coming up from along the cop’s left, and he spun to face the guy. It was a G-Man, in the stereotypical sense of the word, sunglasses and shorn head gleaming in the afternoon light and black suit all buttoned. He flipped out a badge and flashed it. “Lucas Cage, Health Inspector. I’m with the CDC.” He flashed a brilliantly white grin at the cop, and jerked his head backwards at the Biotron. “Lucky I was here, if we hadn’t caught it and evacuated everyone, the whole place could have been contaminated.”_ _

__“Bio… what?” The cop was clearly spooked. “I… like, you mean, like anthrax?”_ _

__“Hell no,” said Inspector Cage of the CDC, tucking his leather badge wallet back into his breast pocket. “New variety of brucella. That’s a bacteria.” He glanced down at the cop. “Lives in cheese.”_ _

__“Lots of bacteria live in cheese,” the cop frowned. “I mean that’s kind of the point of cheese.”_ _

__“This is a _bad_ bacteria,” the Inspector frowned at him. “And it mutated. And went airborne. Look, all these people are all right, they’re just confused. Let’s get them moving away from the building, can you get me your supervisor? We should move them over-- ah.” He looked over as the crowd began to move._ _

__In the middle of the crowd, an older, rather barrel-shaped woman in police gear was standing with another G-Man, very nearly the perfect bureaucratic stereotype complete with receding hairline and mild smile. The woman was speaking into her shoulder radio._ _

__“... Move everyone to the Marching Band field…” the radio on Freckle Cop’s hip crackled to life. “Repeat, the building may be unsafe. Move everyone to the Marching Band field right now. Possible meth lab found in the building.”_ _

__The cop turned to Inspector Cage, whose smile grew, if anything, more beatific._ _

__“And that, too,” he said. “Senior Executive Jiminez found it during his inspection. Lucky we were here. Can we get these people moving?”_ _

__“Sure, yeah. Yes. All of you, let’s _go!_ ” Freckles cried, turning to push the crowd across the road and towards the field. He turned back to Skye and the G-Man, clearly looking for affirmation, and Inspector Cage deflated into Agent Triplett of SHIELD, who tipped him a wink of approval. _ _

__Just as the cop was turning to follow the crowd, a body dropped from the frame of a greenhouse, above. He drew on it as it unfolded itself and stood up._ _

__“Hey,” said Clint Barton, smiling at the cop and tipping his hands outwards. Skye had leisure to take in the details of him now, where she hadn’t before. He was black-on-black-on-black. The t-shirt had clearly seen better days (possibly on a smaller person), but the tac vest and the cargo pants and the shooting gloves and the thigh holster-- not to mention the quiver and bow slung across his back-- were in good order, and not the kinds of things CDC officials were wont to carry._ _

__“Hands up!” said the cop, fumbling for his weapon._ _

__“Already up,” said Clint, genial as anything. “Didn’t mean to make you nervous. I’m with them.” He waved vaguely at Trip._ _

__“You’re not a health inspector! Who’re you?”_ _

__“Detonation squad.” Clint’s voice was so flat, so very matter-of-fact, that Skye saw the cop just crumple under it, all paper-beats-rock._ _

__“I’ll just move that crowd, then,” he said, and turned to do exactly that. Clint, Trip, and Skye watched him go._ _

__“Excuse me,” they turned, to find Doctor Delgado watching them all. “Can I put my hands down now?”_ _

__\----_ _

__“Thank you, sir, we’ll take it from here,” Captain Schunk said and Phil smiled his best butter-wouldn’t-melt smile and shook her hand. They’d migrated to the Marching Band field, and were both watching the crowd begin to settled down and sort itself into ragged clumps, spreading out over the broad swath of lawn._ _

__“I appreciate it, Captain, I’ll make sure that the Director has our report, before we leave. You may… find the scientists a bit twitchy for a while, now that they know what was going on next door.” Captain Schunk was not a small woman, and her snort was just as hearty as her build._ _

__“No different than usual. You weren’t here when the milking parlor flooded over at the Dairy Cattle Center. Director’s found some dorms for them, and we’ll have a couple officers on watch, just in case the cooks come back looking to retaliate.” Her radio crackled then, and she turned and wandered off, answering it, without saying goodbye to Senior Executive Pablo Jiminez-- or even looking back._ _

__“So we’re going with meth lab? Because I was playing the whole cheese bacteria angle,” Agent Triplett said, and Phil turned again. There were three of them nearly upon him, silhouetted against the smoking exterior of the Biotron._ _

__Triplett himself was still all black and ruby suit, sleek and tall and faintly amused. The height line dipped down to Skye next to him, stripped down to her tank top and jeans, watching him carefully. The sightline tilted right back up to Clint after that, lounging along like the other half of a set of mismatched watchtowers, his shoulders broad, his tac vest open at the neck just because life hated Phil, and his face…_ _

__His face _shining_ , as he watched Phil._ _

__“I liked the cheese bacteria,” Clint said with a sideways grin at Triplett, which Triplett returned with a shrug that managed to communicate _I know, right?_ as clearly as words. “Meth labs are so played out, Phil.”_ _

__“If you hadn’t disappeared to the rooftops, you might have been able to choose,” Phil replied, mouth working nearly on autopilot until it got to the very end, where he bobbled a bit and then snapped his teeth shut before he could end it with a very undignified _BaClintAgenton_. He was trying to remember if there had _ever_ been a time when Clint had called him _Phil_ in the field, and he was also trying not to look like a complete fool around Triplett and Skye._ _

__“Nah, I was never really good at explanations,” Clint said, easy with it-- right up until Skye snorted, and then he looked down at her with such a scandalized, vaguely panicked, expression that Phil couldn’t help it, he had to laugh. The whole afternoon had been so surreal that it seemed to be the only reaction he had left._ _

__“Is this how it’s gonna be?” Triplett asked, laughing too, “Barton just gets to show up anytime he wants, make a mess, and skip the clean up? How do I get that gig?”_ _

__“ _Well_ ,” Clint started, a highly dangerous twinkle in his eye, and Skye elbowed him in the ribs. “Ow. Damnit, Skye, _ow_. You know it’s not like I have to be here, you could show some gratitude.”_ _

__“Thank you, Clint,” Phil said, hoping his voice didn’t sound quite as accidentally _ardent_ coming out of his mouth as it did in his ears. Because it was true; Clint didn’t have to be here. By all rights there was no way Clint _should_ be here, all deadly and happy and easy in the bright afternoon sun, as if he hadn’t ever jumped out of a tower in Italy because he loved Phil so much he apparently could never be near him. _ _

__That he was here, that he’d apparently had Phil’s lost letter hand-delivered to him by Nick Fury himself, and that he had _stayed to be seen_ for the first time, was already too much. Add in the way he was bouncing on his feet and-- no. It couldn’t be that easy after all this. The last thing Phil could afford to do now was make _more_ assumptions. So he’d show as much gratitude, as much humility as he possibly could. _ _

__“SHIELD appreciates your help,” he added._ _

__“SHIELD would also appreciate it if we could wrap everything up shortly, sir,” May said, as she herded herself and two scientists up to the group. She was ranged slightly behind Jemma and Sephina Day, and while she was wearing her Agent face, from the way she guided them without ever touching, it was clear she was worried about them._ _

__Jemma _did_ look on the edge of collapse, and Sephina was, if anything, hanging over it. They were both covered in gravel, dust, and scratches, and Sephina was trembling a little. _ _

__“Sephie would like to come with us, please, Director,” Jemma said, tightening her grip on her friend’s hand. Sephina tightened back, and drew herself up to her full… height. What there was of it. _Ah, yes, another petite firebrand. Apparently I’m taking up a collection now.__ _

__“For the moment, sure,” he found himself saying. “We have a spare bunk on the Bus.” _Which was Fitz’s_. He didn’t meet Jemma’s eyes, glanced over at May instead. There was nothing _there_ in her expression, so why the hell did he feel so judged?_ _

__“We need to find room for Agent Barton, too,” Antoine Triplett said, and Phil closed his eyes for a moment, because May’s eyes had widened and fastened on his and no, this was the last, the very last thing he wanted to try to explain at the moment, largely because he had no idea what the hell was even going on anymore._ _

__“If he decides to stay, we can find accommodations, but he’s not--”_ _

__“-- hard to please,” Clint interrupted Phil smoothly, wandering around behind him. Phil went stiff, eyes still locked on Melinda’s, and she seemed to stiffen too. Clint emerged on the other side with a hand outstretched and an open face, and he caught first Sephina’s, then Jemma’s, hands up in shakes. “Hi, I’ve met everyone else here. I’m Clint Barton. You’ve got to be Dr. Simmons; Phil talks about you a lot. And… Dr. Day? Is that right?”_ _

__And just like that, Clint had gained two new devotees. Phil would have said something at that point, he really would have, except that he was frozen in place. His backside was still tingling from where Clint had slid a hand around it as he passed._ _

__Clint had never, ever, been that open with him in public._ _

__“May,” Clint said, looking past the two scientists at Melinda, and she nodded back at him._ _

__“Barton. You finally showed. I was expecting you earlier.” Phil fought down the urge to ask her why exactly that was-- if someone in SHIELD had known Clint was spying on the Bus and warned her. Because after all, Melinda had been there since practically-- no, since absolutely the beginning of Clint and Phil. She might not know exactly what they’d been getting up to all this time, but she did know how friendly they’d always been. The reflexive urge to get her hackles up in return, that was all leftover from Phil’s own issues with her surrounding her reporting on him to Fury for his own supposed good._ _

___Bygones, as Clint says. She’s with us and we need her, and I won’t destroy decades of friendship worse than I have. Worse than_ we _have, together.__ _

__“Glad to know you were expecting me,” Clint was responding to her, and the humor was back in his eyes. “Though why you didn’t--”_ _

__“Debrief,” Phil said, and they all turned to look at him. Clint’s expression of innocence was too damn elaborate by half. “Let’s get off this field, and away from the crowd-- I need to check in with University Housing, Dr. Day, on behalf of your colleagues. And then we’ll debrief in the tennis courts across the street. Everyone coming?”_ _

__“You’re the Director,” May said, and turned to lead the way._ _

__Phil watched his team follow along, then turned to look for Clint who… had disappeared again._ _

__Of course._ _

__\----_ _

__Jemma and Sephie leaned against one another, occasionally tilting for enough to bump Skye's shoulder. On the one hand, it was nice to sit there, to feel included with the two of them. On the other, she was starting to get restless, wanting to leap up to go catch AC and _demand_ he get his ass in gear and go fix things with Clint. She was just _so done_ with their matching expressions of mopeypants sadness and with all the self-sacrificing bullshit she’d witnessed from them over the past several months. Neither one of them was better off without the other, and it was so past time for them to figure that out. Thankfully, judging from the self-satisfied determination that she’d seen rolling off of Clint and the wide-eyed astonishment on AC’s face, it seemed they were _finally_ ready to do just that._ _

__She tried to distract herself from worrying over her boss's love life by watching Trip and May discuss the tennis court she was sitting on. They stood nearby, both of them talking and gesturing around the courts, Trip's high-watt smile cranking up with every gesture of his hands._ _

__"And then every time Blake tried to serve, Fury would..." Skye missed Trip's next word, but the finger gun was fairly descriptive. “I thought we were going to have to fight him for that bottle of scotch before the damn tournament was over.”_ _

__“Did you catch any of the badminton tournament?” May made a gesture that could have meant “keg stand” or it might have been “and then I torched that motherfucker.” Her stone-faced glare didn’t change, though._ _

__And what _was_ her problem? She’d been set to maximum glare since the group had gathered outside the smoky walls of the Biotron. Since… huh. Skye rolled to her feet and edged her way into the conversation._ _

__“So SHIELD tennis tournament, huh?” Trip shot her another of his patented winks._ _

__“You should have seen it, girl! Fury was supposed to be a net judge, but no one could get his sidearm off of him, so he started amusing himself by deciding if someone had good form or not and then blasting the ball before they could make contact with the net. The probies and juniors were so confused.”_ _

__“Fury’s sense of humor took some… adjusting to.” May’s mouth managed to almost smile, but her eyes were still so distant. Trip turned toward Sephie and Jemma, going to squat near them, dazzling smile already at the ready to charm them and settle their nerves._ _

__“Where’d Barton get to?” And now May just sounded bored._ _

__“He had some _thing_ to get to. I guess. I mean… He’ll be back.” Skye wasn’t sure what she was allowed to say. What she was _expected_ to say here. “I…You’ve been expecting him, huh?” _Too perky, Skye. Dial it back!__ _

__“Where Coulson goes, Barton eventually follows.” She shrugged. “I was actually more surprised that it took him this long to catch up.”_ _

__Skye wasn’t sure how to answer that: _Yeah, you missed it before._ Or maybe _Oh they “caught up,” alright._ She opted for a noncommittal hum. _ _

__“You two seemed pretty buddy-buddy back there.” May left it open-ended, waiting for Skye to fill in details._ _

__“We’d met.” It was the safest answer. “Speak of the devil!”_ _

__Clint had gotten to within about ten feet of their little cluster in the middle of the tennis court without anyone noticing his approach. And Skye was gonna _have_ to ask him how he did that, because, hello! Useful!_ _

__“Hey, Skye. May.” He’d lost the thigh holster (pity about that) and the tac vest (and bow and quiver), looking somehow much more boyish in just the too-tight shirt and cargo pants. “Phil off playing government spook somewhere?”_ _

__“He’s arranging accommodations on campus for the science team.” May was studying him far too closely. “So how’ve you been?”_ _

__“Oh, you know, too many baddies in the world, not enough hours in a day.” He shrugged casually, stuffing his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders. “Making nice with my new team and trying to figure out how the hell we let our little infestation grow so big before we saw the droppings they left all over the place.”_ _

__May opened her mouth to retort, but Clint’s head came up and his whole body tensed like a pointer dog sniffing its target. If he’d had a tail, it would have curved high and begun waving like mad, clearly. May’s attention shifted to follow the direction of his eager smile. AC was strolling towards them, hands stuffed in his pockets, a secretive little smile curling his lips. Clint drifted toward him without visibly appearing to move, and AC looked up at him, his smile deepening enough to crinkle the corners of his eyes._ _

__“Campus authorities have cleared a hall for the the science team.” He stopped just inside Clint’s personal space, shoulders relaxing just a bit. “There are cleanup crews on scene from the local fire department, and city police are assisting campus police with crowd control. It appears we're finished here, so everyone can head back to the Bus to shower and change.” His eyes darted toward Clint. “We’ll finish the debrief tomorrow. Take a night off. Go wild. Or… well, go eat at least.”_ _

__“I know this great little joint in town,” Trip bounced to his feet and flashed that fabulous grin again. “Come along, ladies, and let Antoine Triplett show you the finer things in life.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You comin’ Barton? Coulson?” Skye wasn’t sure how AC missed the hopeful, pleading look Trip threw his way. _She_ wouldn’t have been able to resist. But, then again, she didn’t have a beaming, glowing, brilliantly happy Clint sucking up all her attention._ _

__Clint aimed a wink at Skye, and she tried to glare him down. “Nah, I… have something I need to take care of first. Director promised to help.”_ _

__If Skye hadn’t been tipped slightly in AC’s direction, she would have missed the way his ears suddenly pinked. Oh. It was like that._ _

__“Fine,” she said with an overly-dramatic fake sigh. “You be boring like that. If you run out of things to _do_ , you can catch up later.”_ _

__May allowed herself to be herded along in front of Trip, but Skye saw her glance over her shoulder once before they were clear of the tennis courts. Skye couldn’t resist the chance to do the same, and there they stood, AC and Clint, standing far too close to be casual, but not close enough to have fixed everything between them quite yet._ _

___Come on, AC. You can do it!_ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Hips Don't Lie


	10. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walking and Talking in a Garden; Celebratory Drinks and Dancing

They stood in silence until Phil’s team had disappeared around the corner. Then… kept on standing in silence. Clint glanced over at Phil, looking for a cue, only to find him glancing back. A flush crept up Phil’s ears, and Clint found himself biting his lip and closing his eyes against a laugh.

“Well,” he said.

“Indeed,” Phil returned, and then, “you needed my help with something?”

_Several_ somethings, really, and Clint fought back the urge to say _Yes, I can’t get my pants off. Maybe you could help?_ From the way Phil was looking, a little shell-shocked still, he got the feeling he needed to go easy. That… was not going to be the least difficult thing he’d had to do in his life. Okay. Start… slow. 

“Saw a garden over there.” Clint gestured, letting his shoulder bump Phil’s. “Maybe wander that way with me for a bit?” Clint wasn’t a complete idiot. Gardens were romantic. Nice places to reconnect. And by “reconnect,” he meant find a pretty place to go back to Phil’s mouth (and neck and ears, and that little spot on his throat that made him whimper and buck against Clint’s hips).

“Yeah,” Phil said, looking where he gestured. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

They wandered in the back way, along a dirt path past a stucco shed and a tall white clapboard fence, and emerged at a long white arbor, shaded with vines and hanging plants, a somewhat winterburnt arborvitae flanking it on one side, and thriving hostas marching along under the shade. Phil’s hands were stuffed in his pockets, and his eyes were half closed, as they walked under the arbor and wandered out to a terrace overlooking a formal boxed garden. Some gardeners-- whole cohorts of gardeners, probably, student and professor-- were clearly experimenting with formal gardens on a miniature scale. An Italianate terrace here, but wholesome and thoroughly Midwestern, a little too lush in the brightness of summer and frostbitten in Decembers. Somehow it was a more appropriate setting for Phil, his suit a tad rumpled, his shoulders thrown back, than Ravenna ever had been.

Phil walked past him, went to stand out at the end of the terrace and examine the low boxwood knots and the plantings within them. Clint contemplated giving him more time to settle, but the itch in his hands, the need to get his fingers on that exceptional ass peeking out from the split of Phil’s suit jacket, was growing unendurable. 

The breeze was cooling towards evening as he came up behind Phil, and it was ruffling that little bit of jacket, teasing Clint. He used the knuckles of one hand to smooth it down. Safer than the flat of his hand-- he had a dim sense that touching Phil that way would be like being electrocuted; he’d be shocked into gripping tight, wouldn’t be able to pry himself away for anything. And he needed his hands free for what he was about to do, which was slide his arms around Phil’s waist and pull him backwards, into Clint’s embrace.

Phil went willingly, head tilting back to fall on Clint’s shoulder, offering up his neck, and Clint went straight for the warm skin revealed. Sure enough, Phil shuddered in his arms at the nip, bucking back and letting a soft whine slip out. No different from the hundreds-- thousands, perhaps-- of times Clint’s teeth had paused there before. This time, though, when Phil’s eyes fluttered closed, he sighed, and said:

“I love you so much, Clint.” 

“Hmmm,” Clint said and nibbled again, encouraged.

“God. Clint, babe,” he got, and that was definitely promising, so he tried once more, and slid one hand down a little as he did, so that Phil’s reflexive little buck ended up pressing him against Clint’s hand. Phil’s reaction _there_ was nearly enough to make Clint throw him straight down on the paving stones and climb on top of him. 

It was nearing dusk, they hadn’t seen anyone else in the garden. Maybe they could get away with it-- Phil’s hand threaded into his hair, and tugged his head back. Clint went unwillingly, lips reaching out in vain for the welcoming little hollow he’d been nibbling at.

“I… thought you wanted to _talk_ ,” Phil panted.

“We’re talking!” Clint tried. “I’m talking right now! You were just talking, just now. And I really liked it. You can do it again.”

“What, say ‘I love you?’” Phil asked, momentarily diverted, and Clint felt his face blossom into a grin so big it could probably be seen from space.

“Yeah, like that,” he replied, and realized he’d gone hoarse. Phil twisted in his arms, far enough to cup his face in those big, calloused hands, and searched his eyes.

“I love you,” he said, and Clint kissed him. He’d just gotten real nice and settled into it, too, his tongue exploring the interior of Phil’s mouth and his hips starting a slow rhythm against Phil’s, when Phil backed off again.

“Damnit, Clint, stop humping me for a minute. I can’t think when you do that.”

“Don’t really need to _think_ right now, Phil. Enjoying this,” Clint said, rocking himself in. Phil’s look was half exasperated and half aroused, which was again as familiar as coming home. _And somehow, we didn’t figure this out ‘till_ now.

“Yes, but you were enjoying it in Ravenna, too, until you jumped out a window.” Phil said, and he looked as if he thought Clint might do that again, which was ridiculous. For one thing, there were no windows around. For another….

“But that was before I got your letter.” Obviously.

Phil, though, Phil was acting like it wasn’t obvious at all, and wasn’t that just like him?

“I know. And you said you wanted to talk, in person, about it. Clint I… look, I’m trying not to make assumptions here about what you want. It… seems to go badly when I do. But I need… I need to apologize, and I need to know what you want; I need you to _talk_ to me.” 

“I thought you apologized pretty well already. Thought I was being pretty clear, too,” Clint muttered, “But if you need another demonstration…” he ground up against Phil again, twisting a little, keeping his eyes locked on Phil’s clear ones as he did, watching them widen and darken.

“Using your words, please, Clint, not your hips,” Phil said, but his voice was ragged.

“But Phil! Hips don’t _lie_ ” Clint cried. His reward was Phil collapsing in his arms, forehead falling on his shoulder, as he laughed.

“You’re a goddamn menace, Clint.”

“Love you too, babe.”

“Yeah?” Phil said into his chest, and Clint nodded, feeling the tickle of Phil’s soft hair against his cheek. Phil raised his head. “Then _talk_ to me. Or let me talk to you. Please.”

“All right, all right,” Clint said, and pulled away. “But it’s gonna be hard, keeping my hands to myself.”

“Okay.” Phil said, though his entire body was swaying forward like it wasn’t okay at all. He heaved a breath. “Okay. Follow me.” He stepped down off the terrace into the little boxed garden, and held out a hand for Clint.

“Anywhere, babe,” Clint said, and grabbed his hand. “What d’you want to talk about first?”

That brought Phil up short, and Clint amused himself watching the play of emotions across Phil’s face, the return of the kind of stopped-short _I can’t English good today_ look that he’d had in Ravenna. Well, it was amusing _now_ , at the time it had been kind of horrible. _Okay, maybe we_ do _need to talk._

“How ‘bout I start with what happened after Ravenna, and we ease into it?” Clint asked, and Phil nodded, gratefully.

They set off together through the gardens.

____

Clint started with the mission itself, and how he had known to come rushing down to their rescue-- yet again. Phil was grateful for the reprieve, the chance to order his thoughts, now that he was mostly convinced Clint wasn’t going to disappear the moment his back was turned. Given that, at any moment, his traitor tongue might still decide to wander off, he needed to approach the hard topics a little obliquely. 

Their footsteps crunched in time on the garden paths as Clint talked. The late sun poured over his shoulders, turning him all gold and black, as if he were still in his Ronin gear. They passed in and out of the shadows of trees and through hedges and clots of flowers in orange, ruby, gold, purple, exploring every separate exquisite little setting, and Phil thought he’d never seen anything half so worth lingering on in his life.

"You didn't have the pull I had with 'Zeg," Clint was saying as they meandered onto a little red bridge over the fishpond. 

He was walking so close to Phil that their arms bumped and knuckles brushed each time they stepped, but apparently that was no longer enough, because he looked down at their hands with a faint chuckle, then brought his hand up to rest on the inside of Phil's elbow, which Phil crooked reflexively. Clint's fingers tightened once, then rested where they were, and Clint continued on as easy as if they always walked like Victorian lovers. "I knew I could get more out of them than you could ever hope to buy-- or barter for. 'Zeg's a sentimentalist at heart. And loyal; they didn't want me to go after Raina, even though they were happy to tell me about her interest in Rucker and her crew. But _you_ , you guys aren't me. And 'Zeg must still not realize we're connected again, 'cause they called me and volunteered that Raina and Rucker had made a deal."

"How'd 'Zeg know that, though?" Phil asked, trying not to imagine what the Fortune Teller might have to be sentimental about, that concerned Clint. _Phil_ got to be sentimental about Clint, even if still faintly confused, beneath the euphoria, but anyone else? He squeezed Clint's hand with his elbow, just for reassurance, and Clint laughed. 

He'd _missed_ that laugh.

They stopped in the middle of the bridge, and Clint pulled him to the rail to lean out over the water and watch the koi as they slipped along, bright shadows in dark water.

"Only 'Zeg knows why 'Zeg does things, babe. The important part is, they knew, and I was able to warn Skye."

"And come to our rescue." Phil said, "Which... thank you. I... that had to be awkward." Clint looked at him sharply.

"What? The conversation with Skye? Not much, not once we got past the initial bit where I really badly needed to tell her to watch out for Raina and that I was coming, where she thought it was _vital_ to let me know that you'd written a letter but it got lost, and you were pathetically in love with me--" Phil grimaced at that characterization, true as it was, and Clint snorted at him-- "her words, babe-- and please not to run away this time. Once we stopped talking over each other, though, and I told her I'd read the damn letter and it was all gonna be okay, I wasn't gonna pull another stunt like Ravenna, the conversation was easy enough. I think she ships us."

Phil was quite certain she did. He didn’t think he was _quite_ ready to admit just how pathetic he’d really been, though, laying all his burdens on her. If he hadn’t been in a weakened state…. _No, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t even matter that it turned out all right, it still wasn’t fair of me. I’m her boss._

"So... was it the letter, or Skye, that convinced you to hear me out?" he asked, because much as he liked Skye, her well-being just wasn’t his foremost concern at the moment. 

The events of the afternoon had been so chaotic, the turnaround so sudden, that part of him couldn't really believe in the planking beneath his feet, the gurgle of the water, and the man warm against his side, smiling at him indulgently. Until he was certain what had caused it, he knew he couldn't trust that this moment wouldn't slip away too.

"Hear you out? What for? Phil, look," Clint reached out and turned Phil's face with one warm, calloused hand against his cheek.

Phil closed his eyes for a moment against what he saw in Clint's face, the humor and joy radiating from it, because it was impossible that wasn't just a shadow too, a dream too good to believe. 

"Look," Clint said again, and Phil looked. "Kate and I talked, when she got back from LA, and I told her the same things I told you-- ranted at you, sorry-- in the tower in Ravenna." For a moment, Clint was the one who looked away, and his features took on an embarrassed twist. "And when I said I couldn't be with you, if you didn't love me back? She asked me 'and what if he does?'"

"What did you say?" Phil knew his voice was barely there, hardly a whisper, but he couldn't wait for the air to ask it properly. That might never come.

"I said I didn't know," Clint shrugged, still watching him, and Phil felt his heart stutter. "But I was lying-- mostly to myself. Proof of that being that after I read the letter, my only thought was that I'd just put myself half a world away from you _again_."

"And the answer to the question?"

"You're not getting it, Phil... or maybe I'm not explaining it right. I tend to do that. It never _was_ a question. There _never_ was an answer to that question except 'go to him, stay with him, and love him back.'"

\----

The stopped-short look on Phil’s face, eyes and mouth wide and rounded, was probably the sexiest damn thing Clint have ever seen, and he savored it for the long moment before Phil blinked his way back to full sentience. 

“But,” he asked, after he’d swallowed hard, “but _why_?”

“ _Why?_ ” Clint echoed, feeling more than a little stopped-short himself all of a sudden. 

“Yes, Clint.” Phil raised his free hand and pressed it over Clint’s, where it still lay cupping his jaw, as if he wanted to make sure he’d got Clint glued right to him for the next bit. “I hurt you so badly. I _meant_ to hurt you. Not… not like I did, I… well, you read the letter. But I meant to drive you away, and it doesn’t make it all right, that I didn’t know I loved you when I did it.” 

“You were hurting, yourself, babe,” Clint said, and freed his thumb enough to rub it against Phil’s cheek. It was an understatement; with his head clear, and sure in the knowledge that Phil loved him _back_ , the storm had started to pass. He could begin to wipe away the rain and catch sight of the Phil behind all the yelling and cutting words in Lima, and that Phil was damaged beyond belief. He wanted to apologize himself, for not seeing it at the time, but he didn’t think Phil would take it well. “You were hurting, and you were lashing out, and you didn’t know how fucked up you were. You said so.”

“But that doesn’t make it right, either! Clint-- for God’s sake,” Phil pulled his hand down and kissed the knuckles, lips pressing in hard, and his fingers trembling. “For God’s sake,” he repeated, his words muffled against Clint’s skin. “You deserve better. Please. Babe. Please, tell me you know: you deserve better.”

“Phil.”

Somehow, it didn’t much matter how, Phil ended up gathered into his arms, and Clint had him half bent over the rail of the bridge, both hands around his jaw now, pulling him in close enough to kiss. It was a hard kiss, hard as Phil’s had been against his hand, meant to brand himself onto Phil’s mouth more than anything else. Hands were clutching at his biceps for a moment, still shaking, before they moved up to brace against his shoulders, pushing him back. Clint let himself be moved with only a minor huff of protest, but knocked his forehead against Phil’s. 

He refused to apologize; what the hell else was he supposed to do with that kind of protest after all?

“Clint, that’s not an answer,” Phil managed after a moment, and his eyes were looking far too bright. Clint swiped a thumb across his eyelashes when they shut, and was only mildly surprised to find himself wiping away a tear.

“No, it’s a damned imperative. Phil, babe. I don’t… I don’t really have an answer for you. I mean, I mean,” he sighed, and knocked his forehead against Phil’s, trying to force the idea to come out in words. “If I know I deserve better, it’s ‘cause you tell me I do, and so does Nat, and you’ve always been pretty smart. You want irony? Ready for this?” Phil nodded, tiny jerky movements against his forehead, his eyes still shuttered.

Clint kissed him on the nose.

“Hi,” he said, when Phil’s eyes had flown open, and met his. “You know what gave me the strength to say no to you, in Ravenna? Any clue?”

“No,” Phil said, searching his face, and: “Tell me.”

Clint felt his smile start to grow watery, and figured he had very little time to get it out.

“I remembered that you and Nat and Kate and Skye all seemed to think I was some kind of responsible adult. _You_ and them, Phil. You, the first of all of them.” He kissed Phil again, lightly, just because he could. “So, yeah, it wasn’t all right that you hurt me. But, babe, you apologized. And you explained how it wasn’t gonna happen again. It’s _not_ , right?”

“Not…” Phil swallowed. “Not intentionally. Not when I’m in my right mind. Clint, I swear. But… there’s a chance….” He pulled right away from Clint now, shoving out from behind him and backing a step down the bridge. When he looked up, face shadowed in the gathering twilight, he looked positively haunted. “There’s a chance I could be…” he bit his lips, and yeah, that _I no English good_ thing was back. Anyway, it was pretty clear the whatever-it-was was related to the secrets about what’d happened to him. 

“God, look at you. I should never have left you alone,” Clint whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Phil laughed at him.

Well, Phil let out a kind of shaky sob, and Clint wasn’t entirely sure he shouldn’t be running to sit him down.

“You did exactly what you should have done, Clint. I was the one who fucked everything up.”

“Oh come on, that was a joint effort,” Clint grabbed his hand, and started tugging. Phil stumbled after him, as they rounded the pond, passing so quickly the stalks of iris rustled. “What the hell’s a guy got to do to find a place to sit around here?” 

“Why are we--?” Phil asked, and Clint didn’t bother to let him get to the end of the sentence. He’d found what he wanted; a little covered pergola set above the far end of the pond, just back from the path. There was a bench inside, and even if anyone _was_ in the garden at this hour, they’d have a hard time seeing Clint and Phil hidden in the shadows, half behind the purple maple. 

“Because,” Clint said, as he jumped on the garden bench and pulled Phil up, before stepping up to the path next to the pergola, “I get the feeling the rest of this conversation is going to require a lot of kissing, and I want you right here for it.”

He got Phil down on the wooden bench, and leaned right into him, pulling Phil’s fist to his chest, and pressed it until it flattened, until he was sure Phil could feel his heartbeat, as he could feel the heat radiating from Phil’s palm. _That’s right, babe, we’re both still here, alive and whole._

“You wanna know something I realized, Phil?” Clint asked, and didn’t wait for an answer. “You run just as often as I do. But we always come back. You came back to me in New York. I came back to you here. And now I know _why._ But more important, now _you_ know why. So, yeah, maybe we’re both idiots for taking so long, and maybe we both hurt each other-- probably will again. But babe, you and I have always been damn good partners. You’ve made me your equal even when I wasn’t. Always trusted my aim. So I’m willing to take the risk, okay? Because I can’t think of anyone who’ll go further to have my back.” 

A moment later, with Phil’s lips pressed hard against his and his back half-bent over the bench, Clint tried to say “told you we’d need to sit down.” He failed completely, but as Phil’s arms went around him and his fingers pressed hard into Clint’s shoulderblades, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

\----

“Ah,” Clint said when they broke apart, “That’s much more like it.” Phil huffed into his neck, eyes still closed against the wetness in them that was threatening to become something more. He felt a warm hand against the nape of his neck, long fingers curling through his hair, nails scraping on the downstroke, and he brought his head up. Clint was smiling down at him again, still, some more, and Phil wasn’t sure he’d _stopped_ smiling since they’d met in the crowd around the Biotron. Very little, anyway. 

“Be kind to a tired old man, Clint,” he said, meaning it to come out wry and feeling it fall a little flat. “It’s not every day I get a second chance. Maybe I need a little time to process.”

“Tired old man my _ass_ , Phil Coulson,” Clint grumbled. “Let me get you somewhere private and I’ll fuck that straight out of you.” 

Phil sat straight up, blinking, and swallowed down the sudden wave of _want_ that had just welled up in him. 

“Um.” He said, and then “um,” again. Clint was staring at him, still, all coiled muscle and hot gaze, almost absurd against the neat, cultivated confines of the pergola. “How the hell do I rate someone like you?” Phil heard the words drop out of his mouth, mostly against his will. He couldn’t wish them back, although the scowl that crossed Clint’s face for a half moment told him he perhaps should have. Then Clint glanced down-- directly at Phil’s lap-- and back up.

“It was the sex,” he said, and smirked, holding Phil’s gaze until Phil felt blood boil up to the tips of his ears. Then he let his gaze run down Phil’s body lovingly. “And the arms. Probably the chest hair. Definitely the smile. And the guns. I mean the actual guns; no one holds a gun like you. And the competence. Jesus, fuck, the competence. And probably the smiles and the way you actually seemed to think I was worth something.”

Phil was fairly certain he was going to damage his heart if he got any redder. _If I die of a heart attack right now, I’m blaming you, Clint, you big sap._

“Shit,” he said, when the pounding in his ears had died down a little. It seemed out of the blue, nearly as complete a revolution in thinking as when he’d first heard the name “Barton” over the comms that afternoon. “Do you really see me that way?”

Clint, who’d been leering at him genially, raised an eyebrow. Phil swallowed and tried again.

“Clint, really. Do you _mean_ all that?”

“Do I _mean_ it?” Clint leaned forward, hands sliding up Phil’s thighs, headed towards the treacherous territory of his hips. Clint latched on at the hipbone, and pulled himself towards Phil, half onto his lap. “Have you _met_ me? Have you been fucking me all this time? Seen the way every damn little thing you-- Phil-- _yes_ I mean all that. God! Some people take a _hell_ of a lot of convincing. Phil, you are altogether the… the most _attractive_ person I’ve ever fucking met. Mind, yeah, but body too.”

He finished by sliding his arms up to Phil’s shoulders and swinging a leg over his lap, till he was straddling Phil. Right out there in a public garden-- well, in a sort of secluded corner of it, and after hours. Still. _Anyone_ could see him, and Phil found his hands drifting down to grab a handful of ass right back because, well, if anyone _was_ getting a view, he wanted to make sure it was a good one.

“You’re blind,” he said fondly, looking up at Clint, the impossible brightness in his eyes. “Or crazy. Or you have some really odd kinks. And I’m so grateful for it, whatever the reason. I don’t deserve you, Clint.”

“Well,” Clint said, roughly. “You have approximately forever to get used to it.”

It was a good thing Clint was really bendy, because Phil wasn’t bothering to be careful of his limbs as he dragged them together, threading his fingers through Clint’s hair and tugging until he had his tongue halfway down Clint’s throat. It was by no stretch of the imagination a _polite_ kiss.

“Can I start forever now?” Phil asked when he finally let Clint go, and Clint’s smile was answer enough.

\----

As they made their way back through the gardens, holding hands and tugging each other along, laughing, Phil felt something well up in his throat, odd enough there that he had to take a moment to catalogue it. Clint felt him pause, and turned.   
They were nearly at the end of the garden, halfway up the steps that led to a big old sandstone pile of a house, rounded with red trim. Clint was standing on the step above him, looking down into his eyes, and Phil had a name for the feeling at last.

Contentment.

It was _terrifying_ , for just a moment, and he knew Clint saw it pass on his face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I…” Phil shook his head, beginning to really resent his brain for its refusal to find words. “I’m just scared I’ll… babe,” he sighed, looked down at their hands where they were still linked. “It feels too good to be real. I didn’t even have to….” He sighed, shrugged. “It feels like I should have had to sacrifice something, to get this. Like it should be harder.”

“It will be,” Clint said, stepping down to him. “Fuck, babe, look at us. I’m an ex-SHIELD agent with a scruffy dog and no real job. You’re the Director of an organization that doesn’t exist, and-- okay. I remember now.” He looked suddenly _blazingly_ angry, and Phil took a step back.

“What?” he asked, faintly. _No, not now. Not now, what the hell?_

“You,” Clint said, poking Phil in the sternum, and Phil looked down. “You said you’d _give up SHIELD_ for me. Give up your team.”

He… had? He… oh. The letter. Phil stared at the finger, then back up at Clint, uncertain. 

“Yes. If that’s what it took…” he started, and Clint rode right over him.

“What the fuck _even_ was that, Phil? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Well, it was before I became Director,” Phil tried, but from the look on Clint’s face, he wasn’t buying that line at all. _Well, I never needed that pride anyway._ “I was desperate? I… I _did_ mean it, but, I’d, well, I’d have done it if you asked.”

“Well thank fuck _one_ of us has sense, then, Phil,” Clint growled, and Phil felt like he was floating.

“How are you so damned perfect?” he asked, and pulled Clint into one last kiss-- a soft one, close-mouthed, lest they never make it out of the garden and back to the Bus. 

“Luck, I guess. Come on, Director. Give me the full tour this time.”

\----

“Okay, seriously,” Clint said as the door to Phil’s office shut behind him, his voice as light as he could make it when his knees were threatening to give way at any moment. “D’you just get off on sneaking me into your bedroom, or what?” 

It had been past dark when they’d gotten back to the Bus, and Phil had slipped them in through the forward cargo entrance and led them upwards through the still darkness of the cargo hold and laboratory, to the spiral staircase that climbed up to the balcony outside the crew quarters. It was both familiar to Clint, and strange to be walking openly, even with no one around to see him. 

“I get off on _having_ you in my bedroom, Clint,” Phil replied, rounding on him, and the heat in his eyes went straight to Clint’s dick. “And on making you scream my name so loud you could practically hear it from outside the plane. And I’ll enjoy both of those things a _lot_ more with no-one around downstairs. You can come down to breakfast tomorrow morning in my boxers and traumatize them that way, if you really want.”

Clint was momentarily derailed by that. Wandering down the spiral staircase with his hair still wild, Phil’s marks livid all across his collarbone and biceps? Hell. Yes. He wanted that. Could picture their reactions. Trip’d just shrug, say good morning, and get on with life; Clint’d gone on a mission with him when he was just a probie still, where they’d found the personnel they were supposed to rescue paddling happily about in a large pool, completely unclothed, while floating a capybara on an aqua pool lounger with an inflatable palm tree sticking out of it. The only goddamn thing Trip had reacted to had been the sunglasses on the capy. So, yeah, he wouldn’t react, but he’d get the point.

So would Melinda May, however blank her face would remain, and Clint could be man enough to acknowledge the fierce reaction that provoked in him.

Jemma Simmons would probably stammer and blush, though, and Skye’d kill him for that.

He didn’t particularly want Skye killing him.

“I… honestly can’t tell if you’re plotting something, strongly considering the idea, or just wandered off someplace else.” Phil’s voice brought him back, and Clint huffed a laugh. Phil was facing him now, leaning with his ass half perched on his desk, hands braced, and it was everything he’d had to drink to forget. And it was-- _Phil_ was-- all his. 

“I’m having a hard time taking this all in, I think. My brain keeps attempting to short me out. Too happy, maybe?” 

“Yeah?” 

The sweetness in Phil’s smile really _was_ too much-- Clint’s heart was going to stop if he had to look straight at it. Something had to be done. 

So he crossed directly to Phil, placed his palms along the firm lines of the man’s waist, and pulled him upright and straight onto Clint’s lips. 

Phil opened to him with a little half-sigh, while wrapping Clint’s shoulders with his arms and crushing the two of them together. Clint circled his waist, pulling their hips as close as their upper bodies, and meanwhile tried to crawl inside him tongue first. Phil’s lips were addictive, firm and soft at once, bitable, warm. He was making tiny little helpless hums as they kissed, half-formed as if he couldn’t stop himself. Clint growled in response, low in his throat, and broke off briefly to nip at Phil’s jawline, determined to draw out all the reactions Phil was muffling against his lips. 

He got a startled squeak for his trouble, and had to close his eyes to keep from sobbing.

“ _Much_ better,” he murmured, and felt Phil press his lips against his cheek. It was a soft, affectionate gesture, and that was the moment all Clint’s blood rushed south, pretty much at once. He froze in the circle of Phil’s arms, afraid that if he so much as breathed he was gonna go off right there.

“Problem?” Phil asked, as he felt Clint stiffen. Clint shook his head vehemently, then paused.

“Kinda,” he breathed, and that was a mistake, because Phil shivered in his arms as the hot damp air hit the tender skin behind his ear. Then he registered what Clint had said, and it was his turn to go stock-still. 

“What… um… oh?” His voice was high and airless. Clint pulled back far enough to look into his eyes, and kiss away the nerves he saw there.

“Problem is,” he said, and felt his own voice tumble out of his throat broken and worn, “that I’m pretty sure I’m gonna go off like a rocket the minute you get your hands on me. Or lips. Or your dick in my ass. And I want to last a _little_.”

“Fuck,” Phil said, “now I’ve got the same problem.” And he shoved Clint back roughly, his strong fingers flexing and tightening in the jersey of Clint’s sleeves. His skin was so flushed he could have been dipped in boiling water, and his eyes were wide and lost and dark. And just _looking_ at him was gonna be a problem, if he kept this up. “Been too damn long without you, babe. I didn’t think…” he trailed off, ducking his head. 

And Clint was just gonna have to risk premature ejaculation, because there was no way he was _not_ kissing Phil, after that. 

They did, somehow, manage to both remain upright-- in all senses of the word-- until they pulled away, and Clint was able to rest his forehead against Phil’s and close his eyes, panting out his relief.

“Jesus,” he said. “Fucking hell. Couldn’t even get my _self_ off most of the time we were…. Feel like I’m gonna explode.” _Wait? Did I just admit to-- shit._ The blush at least had the benefit of drawing a little blood back from his aching dick. But what a stupid thing to--

“Yeah, me too,” Phil said, voice rough. “It was pathetic, frankly.” 

“Fuck, we’re a pair,” Clint laughed. “Okay… okay. Lemme think.”

“Would prefer other activities,” Phil said, beginning to draw him closer again. Clint slapped a hand against his chest to stop him, then whined helplessly as he felt the pec flex beneath the fabric of Phil’s shirt.

“Just. Wait. Okay. Logically.” 

Phil had started in nosing about his jaw again, and Clint tried to scrape together enough brainpower to resent it. 

“Logically,” Phil prompted after a moment, his voice muffled by Clint’s skin, then he bit down.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Clint yelped, and yanked Phil’s head back by the scruff of his neck. Phil smoldered at him in response. “Okay. You first.”

“Me first what?”

“You first getting blown. You’ve got that quick reset. You’ll be back in no time. I can’t count on that. Good?” Clint asked as an afterthought, his hands already moving down to rip open Phil’s waistband.

“Not good,” Phil said, and he spun Clint around and pinned him against the desk. “‘Cause I’m going to hurt someone if I can’t get my mouth on your dick right _now_.” He dropped to his knees as he spoke, pulling his fly out of Clint’s hands, and starting on Clint’s with fingers that trembled, while nuzzling his nose into Clint’s stomach.

Clint pulled him away again, and stepped aside for good measure.

“Phil, no,” he said, and fell to his own knees. “That’s not fair. You’re gonna get to come, like, three times. I don’t want mine to be first!” 

“Someone has to go first, Clint, that’s the way fellatio works!” Phil cried, and then stopped short. And, kneeling on the carpeted floor of Phil’s office, flies half open and hard as rocks, they both burst out laughing. Clint felt himself folded into Phil's arms as he chuckled.

"I love you," he sighed, and Phil squeezed him hard.

"I love you too, babe, even though I always end up sounding absurd around you."

“Part of my charm," Clint said, and kissed him. Phil chased after the kiss, and his lips hit Clint's ear when Clint ducked. "Wait, I got another idea,” he continued, and shifted back far enough to get himself up. He pulled Phil after him, steadying them both against each other until their knees had stopped shaking.

“What’s your idea?” Phil asked, and Clint waved a confused hand at his clothing.

“Strip. You, me, us. And get the damned bed out. And then I’ll tell you.”

He’d seen Phil Coulson strip in a many varied circumstances. The man could fling clothes about with the best of them when necessary, and now he had his shoes off and halfway across the room even while his tie was coming over his head. Clint was getting behind.

He disappeared inside his own t-shirt, struggling with it briefly and getting it off just as he was on the edge of despair. Clint re-emerged on the other side to find Phil pulling his dress shirt off to reveal a faded black tshirt, about a size too big, underneath it, and--

“Phil? Is that my--?” He stopped, and Phil’s shoulders drooped. He half turned his head, as if he were too shy to face Clint.

“I told you I missed you,” was all he said.

“Oh, god, Phil, I love you,” Clint replied, because the words were bubbling up so fast he couldn’t help them foaming over. Phil _did_ turn fully now, and he was grinning sappily. He was also pretty much naked except for his boxers and t-shirt, and Clint was going to be far behind if he didn’t get on with it.

Off came his pants, though not without a struggle, as he was a hell of a lot stiffer than when they’d gone _on_. He was finishing stripping socks when the couch cushion hit him in the head and he staggered backwards.

Phil had finished undressing, and was bent over the hide-a-bed in his couch, flinging cushions with abandon in an attempt to reveal it. He heaved it back and out, and Clint nearly got in his way, he was so busy watching the play of muscles across Phil’s naked back and gloriously furry ass.

“There!” he cried, beaming as he turned to present the now-open bed to Clint. 

“Great,” Clint said, “get on it. _Now_.” 

Phil turned and leapt, landing with an ominous squeak, then flipping over on his back to watch Clint. Phil, _playful_ , Phil, _gleeful_... it nearly trumped Phil, _hairy and sprawling and so hard he was poking straight up_ in how badly it turned Clint on. Some more.

Clint stalked over to Phil, and pushed him down with a gentle hand on his chest.

“Clint…” Phil started, some kind of warning or another. Clint ignored him, in favor of placing a hand by Phil’s hip, and turning to swing one leg over his shoulders.

“Oh,” Phil breathed, and Clint could feel the puff of air against the weeping, aching head of his cock. He was only half paying attention, though, because he was currently lowering himself between Phil’s warm powerful thighs, and most of his attention was focused on getting his own lips on the gorgeous red tip bobbing before him. “Yes, I get it now,” Phil muttered.

And then Clint’s attention neatly bifurcated, as he felt Phil’s lips, his warm wet smooth lips, slide up and over the head of his cock, just as Clint drew a breath, opened wide, and buried Phil’s cock in his mouth. 

____

Phil was extremely grateful for the distraction of Clint, hard and dripping, slipping between his lips. Without that one solid thing-- _heh_ \-- to cling to, he’d have already been bucking up into the hot, wet, _familiar_ recesses of Clint’s mouth, forcing himself down that throat and, most likely, everything would already be over. As it was, he fought off the instincts of his hips by concentrating on dragging out every shudder and groan he could wring from Clint. Although… that possibly wasn’t his best plan, since every groan echoed directly into Phil’s own groin but--

Clint’s tongue gave a particularly enthusiastic stroke, and Phil lost his train of thought. He sucked hard to resist the urge to scream his approval, reasonably certain they were alone on the Bus, but unwilling to be too loud, nonetheless. Just in case. Clint read him even without sound, and his tongue repeated the gesture. Phil had to release his suction and throw his head back to keep from biting down. Instead, he aimed his teeth at the soft skin of Clint’s inner thigh, biting a mark that would linger, and suddenly felt a wash of cold air as Clint shouted and Phil’s cock slipped free from his mouth.

There was a suffocating moment where Clint _sat back onto Phil’s face_ , and then Clint rocked forward, and Phil whimpered as he felt teeth latch onto the edge of his hip. And _that_ was just unfair, so he retaliated by licking a hot, wet stripe from the seam of Clint’s balls, along the soft, smooth skin behind them, and as far up as he could reach. There was a muffled whimper from somewhere near Phil’s crotch, and then the suction was back, and Clint was grinding backward, hips setting a frantic samba against Phil’s tongue. 

_Slurp_ “Oh fuck, Phil!” More suction. “Feels so fucking good!” Suck. “Missed this so much.” 

Phil reached both hands up to grip Clint’s hips, lifting them off of his throat to let Phil get a suck in, too. 

“Shitshitshit!” Lick. “Gonna come, Phil! Gonna _mmph!_ ” Clint slammed his face and his hips onto and around Phil at the same time.

They were never sure which happened first, whether it was Clint choking himself as he forced his throat to open around Phil or if it was Phil’s hands tightening around Clint’s buttocks, digging bruises as his whole body tensed. Either way, they were both shuddering and swallowing and clinging, and then they were lying in a heap on the bed, Phil’s mouth blocked by Clint’s thigh, and Clint’s forehead pressed to the mattress between Phil’s legs.

“So that… that was _amazing_ , boss.” Clint sighed blissfully. “Sir. Babe. Lover.”

Phil meant to say, “God, yes, my love.” But, with Clint’s leg hair tickling his nose, his answer came out “Gaaaaaaah-Choo!”

Clint started to laugh weakly, and he slowly began to twist himself around, drawing grunts and growls out of Phil as he leaned too hard into tender places until he was _finally_ pressed close, and they were both lying comfortably _together_. Phil dragged him into his arms, kissing him deeply, thrilling to the mingled flavors of Clint and Phil, Phil and Clint, on his tongue. 

“I love you, Clint.” Phil kissed his hair, tucking the bulk of Clint under his chin, tightly against the scar on Phil’s chest. “I’m so… I’m just so _glad_ you came back.”

“All you ever had to do was ask, babe.” Clint pressed his lips against the edge of Phil’s collarbone. “‘M just sorry we didn’t figure this out before.”

“‘Parently everyone around us knew.” Phil yawned, short and deep. “Even _Fury_ knew, obviously.”

“He thought we knew, at least.” Clint chuckled deeply, snuggling down against Phil’s shoulder. Most comfortable pillow in the world. “And that from the man who doesn’t _do_ sex.”

“Bet he knew when he left that damned sign on my door.” Phil’s eyes closed against his will. 

“What was there to know back then, Phil?” Clint’s voice seemed to have gone a little tight. 

Phil could feel sleep pulling him under. Just a short nap would be okay. Just a quick rest, with Clint here in his arms. His mouth kept going, apparently, and he heard himself say, “I should have noticed. Should have figured it out after everything in Nairobi, at least. Shoulda told you loved you then.”

But then he was out, and he never heard Clint’s reply.

____

 

“That is _way_ more rum than I expected,” Skye said to herself, and took a long, hard look at her drink. It had one of those overly-clever names, like Stormy Skye… er… Dark n’ Stormy, and it was nominally ginger beer and dark rum, but she was fairly certain someone had put rum in her rum, and kinda spritzed in a hint of ginger beer on top for form’s sake.

She wasn’t _drunk_.

Much.

It wouldn’t do to be drunk, now, when they weren’t entirely out of mission mode yet-- although the remaining scientists on Rucker’s team had toddled docily into police protection, following very strong hints from the Director of the Center of Rapid Evolution that they should be able to find some kind of lab room, possibly even faculty positions…. The Director had evidently been following Rucker’s work for years, and Skye could still see her rubbing her hands together with something that looked very like glee, while the Biotron still smoked behind her.

Academics. Whatever.

Sephina Day was still with them, and looked like she never wanted to leave Jemma’s side, even though she’d been more-than-half-promised a position of her own at Madison. _Must be nice, to be able to land on your feet like that_. So she’d come with them on what was turning into Trip’s Tremendous Tour of Madison, because it turned out, when you let Antoine Triplett off the clock somewhere _other_ than a seedy motel with a few vending machines and a pool without a deep end? 

Man knew good food and good liquor.

“Garrett liked to stay in style where he could,” he’d confided in her as they’d stood at the green marble and dark wood bar in the brewpub they’d washed up at first. The red brick and green facings of the facade had given way to a dark, twisty, warm interior, and a bar stocked with kegs and growlers and brass pump handles, and Skye’d immediately felt her remaining anxiety start to unkink. They’d been waiting for drinks to take back to their tall secluded booth, where Sephina and Jemma and May were waiting. “But he preferred expensive to good, so I never got a chance to go where _I_ wanted when we were in towns. I kept a list.”

“Good start,” Skye told him, as their beers came. 

They’d waited for AC through an appetizer course of beer bread with honey butter, poutine, cheese curds, and soft pretzels-- for some reason, anything carb sounded like heaven. 

Skye’d texted him-- and Clint-- early on, but didn’t really expect them, and about the time she saw a waitress head past their booth bearing a mountain of fried fish, she gave it up and hoped it meant what she, well… hoped it meant. She’d yanked the waitress on the return journey, and very _firmly_ ordered a german sausage plate-- after which she tried not to think too hard about it.

Trip had ordered the Drunken Jerk. Trip was _clearly_ on vacation.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Director Coul--” Jemma had asked, only to be cut off by a growled   
“ _No,_ ” from May, who followed it quickly with “salmon club,” as she snapped her menu shut.

So that had been the first stop, and eventually the skittish scientist had stopped hanging quite so closely on Jemma, and even nodded shyly when Trip, eyeing them both, had proposed another stop before they headed back to the Bus. 

Which was how they’d ended up waddling down narrow bucolic little King street after dark, rolling their stuffed selves into a small lounge where colored scrims over the lighting and faux ionic columns that didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling passed as decor. The kind of place with signature cocktail lists a mile long and too goofy to order with a straight… anything.

Luckily, Trip was up to this task as well, and brought Jemma and Sephina their astonishingly pink beverages with a wink and a casual sparkle in his smile. Skye thought she caught both of them watching his biceps as he left.

She knew _she_ did.

_Well if tonight’s going even half as well as I think, AC’ll_ never _let me look at Clint’s guns again._

That thought, there? That was a _rum_ thought, and Skye needed to stoppit.

But… she hadn’t… _they_ hadn’t, really had a night to let loose in far far far too long. When was the last one she remembered? Was it really in Spain, after they’d found the portly Asguardian guy?

“Hey,” Trip said, and leaned against the little steel and green vinyl stool next to her, turning to watch the crowd mill around the bar, and May sit stiffly in a booth, Sephina and Jemma chattering quietly next to her. 

“Is that a champagne cocktail?” Skye asked, eyeing the flute he was rolling around in his fingers suspiciously.

“Yep,” Trip replied, popping the final p, “and they’re even better than I thought. You let Coulson and Barton know where we were?”

“Yeah,” she said. 

“Are they gonna come out?” 

It came out _way_ more plaintive than Skye thought Trip must have thought it would, because he looked away suddenly. She tried not to laugh, because a) she wasn’t entirely sure which of them he was more disappointed not to see and b) she knew the feeling.

“You’d tell me if they weren’t okay, right? If something were going on?” He was frowning at her now, and Skye glanced from his champagne glass up to him. 

“Everything’s all right,” she told him, because she didn’t know what else to say. 

“You sure? I should maybe call. Hate to miss a scene like this,” Trip smiled that easy smile of his as he looked around the room, and Skye wondered how he’d ever survived life with Garrett. “I’m guessing Coulson’s at best a martini man, but Barton… I remember this one time in Quito, there was this capybara… anyway, we all got a little drunk after, and he got the fruitiest girly drink he could find, just because. This’d be right up his alley.”

“Do I want to know about the capybara?” Skye asked, trying to imagine Clint with his hands cupped around a fishbowl margarita, and failing. 

“Nah. Okay, you just tip me a wink if Coulson needs anything, all right?” Trip said, “Can’t let the bossman get too dragged down. Now, what do you think about May?”

_I think I missed something big there, is what I think._ Skye winced, watching May watching them, then turning back to Jemma and Sephina, then watching them again. 

_Well, okay, there’s one thing I can maybe do, even half-drowning in rum,_ Skye thought, and wandered over. May got up as she approached, and Skye slid into her place on the black and white striped bench without a word. Then she grinned up at May.

“I’m gonna sit here until I can stand steady again, is that okay?” she asked. There was a long pause, before May snorted, and nodded at her.

“Yes,” she said, and her gaze flickered back to the two scientists. “I’m going to get a refill, then I’ll be back.”

“Refill and a dance?” Trip said, from just behind her. He was rewarded with an _eyebrow_ , and if Skye could make an eyebrow of her own say one quarter of that much, she’d die happy. 

“A dance, Agent Triplett?” she asked, when Trip didn’t wither into dust on the spot.

“Yeah,” he said, “a dance. Just a dance. You _do_ know how to dance, right?” 

He got an eyeroll and a snort for that, and Trip grinned happily.

“Great, you can teach me! I’ve got three left feet. Despair of my family.” 

Five minutes later, watching them on the dance floor, Skye decided that Antoine Triplett was a dirty liar. And that if SHIELD had still existed, she would have cleaned _up_ on bets about Melinda May’s dancing ability.

Assuming she survived May finding out about the bets.

Skye leaned back, and let her eyes drift half closed, the rum clutched loosely in her hand. The patrons all blurred together into a mass of movement, but none of it was coming at her, at them, none of it was _wrong_. And spotting patterns was one of Skye’s _Things_. 

In her left ear, the steady hum of Science flowed and ebbed, as Jemma and Sephina talked. There were several empty cocktail glasses lined up on the boxy table in front of them, and Sephina had developed an unfortunate tendency to giggle. Jemma’s gestures had gone loose and generous, and she patted Sephina on the knee.

“You’re _so_ sweet,” she was saying. “Of course I miss Fitz very much. But I don’t think opening up his head is going to help right now.”

“Oh, you don’t open it _up_ , much,” her friend replied. “Well, chemically, maybe. Dr. Rucker knew… but she and Dr. Streiten were working on some kind of serum, before SHIELD fell. Something about regeneration? I _wish_ I had access to those notes. There’s so much I could do.”

“Mmmmm,” Jemma said. “It’s really _too bad_ it was lost. I mean… that we don’t know what it was. I… and you couldn’t synthesize it anyway even if you didn’t know it existed, right? Because you _don’t_ have the chemical make-up.”

“Or the lab,” Sephina agreed, and then her brows drew down, and she hunched over with the earnestness of the thoroughly sloshed. “But I want to help, Jemma. You’ll let me know if I can help? If you ever find anything?”

“Well, of _course_ , Sephie!” Jemma said, and then turned to look at the dance floor, “you’ll be my first call.”

“Oh, I know, Jemma, I do. I would just _really_ hate for Fitz to have to suffer, and for you to _not have him_ , or for you to risk something you hadn’t tried, when I could help you figure out where it… if it was okay. He’s your _best friend_ ; I know you would do anything for him.”

_Huh,_ Skye thought, and her mind made a valiant effort to stir without disturbing her body. _Huh._

Then she went back to watching May and Trip, and the way they watched each other’s backs as they danced, the way one of the two of them always had an eye on her booth and the scientists now sloshing against her.

_Got our backs_ she thought, and nodded to herself, then startled as Sephina hiccuped quietly. _And I got yours, too, boss’n’boss. I just hope to hell I find you both on the Bus in the morning. Quietly. Very quietly._

____

 

Clint curled against Phil, smashed into the mattress by one of those (freckled, huge, perfect, so-very-missed) biceps and wanting to scream in frustration. He glared at the smooth swoop of Phil’s shoulder just above his eyes and forced his body to relax. His mind wouldn’t follow, though, and he continued to lie there, awake and restless.

_Nairobi. Nairobi? NAIROBI, though?_ Clint sighed. Months before that weird little mission in Arizona where everything had gone to hell, and Clint had found heaven in the front seat of a SHIELD-issue car. A year before that horrible episode with the exploding down pillow (well, the episode was great; the aftermath was pretty tough. Until Phil took Clint home and-- _stop there_ ). Nairobi. When Clint was still half-convinced he’d phucked everything up and phinished his chances of ever being more than a phriend to Phil. 

And why then? So Clint had instituted a daring rescue, pulled Phil from a burning building, carried him over his shoulder to safety (and maybe enjoyed the accidental butt-grabs they’d both been forced to indulge in, but it made Clint feel creepy to think about that too long). And so maybe they’d managed the apologies and forgiveness for things that had kept them apart after Fury got involved in their little inside joke. And so _maybe_ that was the first time Clint found himself getting entirely too close to kissing Coulson. But… _love?_

Phil sighed in his sleep, shuffling and rumbling as he settled himself further into the mattress, and Clint found himself half-released. He took advantage to brush his lips along the fur-covered curve of Phil’s scarred right pectoral before he inched himself free and rolled to sitting on the edge of the bed.

A piss and a quick swallow of water in the bathroom wouldn’t go amiss. And then Clint needed to figure out how to amuse himself for a few minutes until he could get his brain around the fact that Phil had, _apparently_ loved him for _more than_ their entire sexual relationship. Shaking his head, Clint went to the head to take care of business. The pressure in his bladder was the only sign that this wasn’t just the _very best dream_ he had ever, _ever_ had.

After he was finished, Clint shuffled back into the office, pausing to admire the naked lines of Phil’s body sprawled across his bed, the relaxation that smoothed away the deep lines around his mouth, the new lines on his forehead and around his eyes that had worried Clint when he’d first seen them under the brilliant Wisconsin sun. 

_God, you’re beautiful, Phil._ Clint smiled down at him, forcing himself not to run his hands through all that gorgeous body hair, to not trace his fingers along the freckled swell of those gorgeous arms. _I can’t believe you’re really mine._

And, well, that was really long enough. Time to get phase two of this show on the road. There was a naked, willing man all sprawled out across a bed, and Clint was gonna wake him up with the most spectacular display of planning of forethought he could put together. 

_What? I know what_ my man _likes!_

Clint chuckled to himself all the way over to Phil’s private little drawer, suspecting that Phil, as was his habit, had included Clint’s biometrics on the lock. They hadn’t actually kept a secret from each other in over a decade. And if _that_ hadn’t clued them in before now… Clint shook his head and pressed his thumb to the same spot he’d seen Phil use before.

The drawer slid open, and Clint reached inside to rummage around for the box of condoms and the bottle of lube. The nearly empty bottle of lube. The nearly empty bottle of lube that looked awfully familiar. The nearly empty bottle of lube that didn’t appear to have gone down any significant amount since their last night together. Since Phil was taken and broken, since Lima and heartbreak, since Portland and… whatever Phil found out while he was there. So either Phil’d been going dry-- which wasn’t like him; Phl loved the little luxuries in life, like good food, good coffee, and a slick hand on his dick-- or Phil hadn’t been going at all. 

Somehow, that thought hurt more. Knowing that Phil had been going through the same thing Clint had, picturing Phil in the shower, hand around himself, and tears in those glorious blue eyes, drowning out the glow and blurring the warm brown flecks… Clint sniffed hard and scratched at one eyelid: Phil needed to dust his damned drawer.

Clint turned his attention to the rather rumpled purple ribbon, smiling as he stroked his fingertips over it. Maybe he should take this opportunity to show Phil how nice wet silk felt when rubbed, licked, sucked against certain parts of the body. Yes. The ribbon will be a _good_ option. 

Lube, ribbon, condoms and…

A stack of folded paper.

And Clint was going to leave it. He _was_. He’d had enough of spying on Phil. But there was an envelope with one of Clint’s cover names and Clint’s _real_ address, right there on top. The items in Clint’s hands tumbled back into the drawer as he reached for the envelope, recognizing the return address as being--

“Project Aftermath.” Clint whispered the name, throat suddenly gone completely dry. His hands started to shake as he picked it up, running a fingertip over the familiar lines of Phil’s handwriting. “I had been his Aftermath contact. So… why didn’t I get this when he died?”

There was no stopping, then. Clint pulled the whole stack out and sank to the floor, leaning his back against the cabinet door behind him and tearing open the envelope. The date had him clutching his chest and panting. This was… this was written _after_. After Lima. After heartbreak. After they’d lost everything. 

_Dear Friend,_ it ran. And “friend,” though? Clint hoped that was just Phil trying to keep the letter generic, rather than him losing his damned mind and assuming that was all they were. And then it went into Phil accusing himself of the most bizarre string of things Clint had ever read: cowardice, cruelty, weakness. And no. Phil had many faults, truly he did, and even Clint wasn’t so besotted to pretend they didn’t exist. But not these things. Not ever. Although… idiocy, maybe. But only when it came to his heart and Clint’s. That was believable. 

_Just how messed up_ were _you, babe?_ Clint forced himself to read it, to read about the encounter with Kate and Lucky in California (fighting off an irrational jealousy that his _dog_ had gotten to be held by Phil while Clint was falling apart). And reading the hard words Phil threw at himself over Skye’s injury. The letter was… rambling. Nearly incoherent. A clear plea for help. 

It broke Clint’s damn heart.

And then he got to the postscript. 

_It’s not fair to tack this on the end of a letter, the last words you will ever receive from me. But I cannot think of leaving the world (again) without having said it to you, just once. I love you. I have loved you for years, and I know that I will always love you. I wish I had realized sooner, soon enough to tell you. I’m sorry for that. I love you. Phorever._

It was several minutes before Clint managed to sit himself back up, wipe his face with the back of his hands, and turn to the rest of the stack of paper. He read them all, heart bleeding out with the tears that dripped onto the already tear-stained pages. 

_How did I ever left this beautiful man when he was this broken, this desperate, this needing?_


	11. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Naughty Bits; and What Comes After

Phil woke up cold, a little stiff, and rather less covered in Clint’s acres and acres of bare, scarred, kissable skin than he would have preferred to be. A sniffle from somewhere nearby had him sitting up fast enough to make himself dizzy. And then he saw Clint huddled in the corner, the floor around him littered with slightly crumpled pieces of paper covered in Phil’s shakiest handwriting; Phil promptly ignored the headrush to leap to his feet. 

“Hey, baby. Baby! Shhhh!” Phil practically flew across the room to drop to his knees, pulling Clint’s shoulders into his arms and rubbing his face against the messy spikes of Clint’s hair. “It’s okay now. I’m okay now.”

“Jesus, Phil!” Clint’s voice was thick with tears. “Why didn’t you tell me? In Lima? In Ravenna? Earlier? Jesus, I just… I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. If I’da known… Fuck! How could I leave you like this, baby?”

“Stop it. Clint, stop!” Phil pulled away to grab Clint by his shoulders and shake. “Stop! You didn’t leave me like that. I didn’t want you to know, and I _sent you away_ to keep you from finding out. This is not your fault.”

“I shoulda known you wouldn’t… that things had to be bad for you to… I _did_ know that, Phil. I knew it, and I let you push me out, anyway.” Clint’s red eyes were fixed on one of the letters. Phil blushed when he realized that it was, er, a bit _stained_. One drunken night when hormones overran good sense and propriety and Phil’s ability to catch drips with a tissue. 

“Stop it, baby. I would have said _anything_ to keep you away. And I was wrong.” He kissed Clint’s damp cheek, his clumped eyelashes, the corner or his lips. “I was wrong, and I am so, so sorry.”

Clint took a shaky breath and pulled Phil into his lap, further crinkling the letter he was holding against Phil’s back. 

“So now it’s time to let me in, yeah?” Clint kissed the juncture of Phil’s shoulder and neck, and Phil shivered, pressing harder against the warmth of Clint’s skin. 

Taking a steadying breath, Phil slowly pushed away to stand up, holding out a hand to drag Clint up after him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.” Phil folded their fingers together. “But not naked on the floor of my office. At least come back to bed?”

Clint nodded, leading the way across the office and pulling back the covers that they’d already kicked askew, and Phil slid in first, holding his arms out to pull Clint close. They worked together to get the pillows shuffled around for comfort and the top sheet and comforter tucked around them, and then Clint snuggled down to rest his face against Phil’s chest with one hesitant kiss to the ugly scar. Phil had to close his eyes against the sight, feeling suddenly less like the mark was something done to him and more like it was again a piece of his own body.

“Thank you, babe.” His throat was suddenly scratchy, and his eyes prickled suspiciously. “Really, Clint. Thank you. For… for everything. For coming back. For loving m--”

“Shut up, Phil.” Clint grinned up at him, stretching up to kiss Phil’s lips. “You’re supposed to be explaining things. Not apologizing. So just shut up and start from the beginning.”

Phil blinked at him. Blinked again. And then started laughing, letting his head drop back and his chest heave, laughing all the tension out of his body, sinking blissfully into the heat of Clint half climbing up his body to kiss (and laugh against) Phil’s collarbone. 

“Shut up and start, huh?” Phil wiped a trace of dampness away from his eyelashes, as he snickered his way back to coherent. “Good to see I’m not the only one who says stupid shit in this relationship.”

“At least I wasn’t trying to explain blowjobs.” Clint settled back into the bed, shoulders tucked under Phil’s arm. “So I still win this round. And _you_ still need to start talking.”

“I don’t… where do I start?” Phil nibbled a rough patch on his bottom lip, thinking. “Centipede. Raina. The theta wave machine.”

“Good a place as any.” Clint’s stroked his palm across Phil’s stomach, a slow, sultry slide back and forth that was almost as arousing as it was soothing. Phil caught his wrist to stop the movement.

“What I saw there, Clint…” Phil took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I was lying on an operating table, top of my head taken off, so some robot thing could sizzle its way through my brain, overwriting my memories.”

Clint jerked out of Phil’s arms so fast that, for a second, Phil was left holding air. 

“You _what_?” Clint’s voice was hoarse, and Phil kept his eyes shut, afraid to see the look on Clint’s face, certain it was the disgust that he’d feared before. The reason he’d run… Clint’s hands cupped Phil’s face, pulling out of his slow downward spiral. “Babe, come back.”

Phil opened his eyes slowly to find Clint leaning over him, fingers stroking along his jaw, eyes wide and horrified and… warm, and hungry, and full of… love.

“Oh, babe, why didn’t you tell me?” Clint’s lips brushed along the edge of Phil’s hairline, as if searching for an injury to kiss all better. “What the fuck did they do to you?”

“They… the procedure they used… it… there were possible side effects. They had to…” Phil closed his eyes again, just for a moment, to gather himself. “I want to show you the video. It’ll explain more than I can.”

Clint huddled under the covers while Phil got up to collect the USB drive from the safe and his laptop from his desk. When he slid back into bed after setting it all up on the mattress, Clint was the one to wrap Phil’s shoulders in his massive arms, holding him tightly, squeezing hard enough to dim the shivers that ran through both of them.

Phil’s face appeared on the screen, explaining how he was resigning from Project TAHITI. How it was too dangerous. How the recipients had all gone mad. And Clint still held him, fingers slipping soothingly through Phil’s hair, stroking along the side of his face, pressing against the steady thrum of pulse in his neck. After the file had stopped, they continued to curl together, holding and being held, until the computer went to sleep. Phil started speaking then, explaining his search for truth, the confessions from May, and, finally, how she’d dug up Phil’s grave (and Clint flinched hard at that) to bring back the truth. As a peace offering. As an apology. As whatever the gesture had meant.

“Have you had any effects?” Trust Clint to aim for the center of the matter, unerringly finding his target.

“Yes.” Phil forced the word out. “Yes. I… I woke up in a storage room at the Playground. The wall--” He broke off with a whimper.

“Shhh! Shh shh shh.” Clint used his considerable strength to simply haul Phil into his lap; not that Phil would have resisted. He clung, fingers digging into Clint’s shoulders, trying to burrow inside the warmth, the _safety_ of him. “It’s okay, babe. Whatever it is. It’s okay. We’re gonna deal with this _together_. I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere. Well, figuratively. I’m sure I’ll have to get out of this bed at some point. To piss. And probably for coffee.”

A laugh bubbled out of Phil’s chest, interrupting his panic attack, and he leaned back as Clint’s chuckle joined it. And, really, Phil _needed_ to taste that laugh.

“I could have someone bring us coffee, I suppose, now that I’m the director.” Phil sighed, smiling and leaning his face back into Clint’s neck. “But you’re absolutely _required_ to get out of my bed for all bodily functions. Except orgasms.”

“And swallowing?”

Phil huffed another laugh and relaxed back into Clint’s chest. He described the symbols he’d carved into the storage room, as well as those Garrett had etched into the door in Phil’s science bay. How they’d seen the symbols in a warehouse in Belarus. Clint had let loose on the subject of John Garrett for a few minutes, neatly slicing through the tension that was building under Phil’s skin, and then he leaned back and closed his eyes, fingers sliding down Phil’s arms to braid them with Phil’s.

“And that’s all you’ve seen so far?” Clint’s easy acceptance cut through another knot that had been clenched in Phil’s gut for… since he’d woken up after surgery in Tahiti. Or TAHITI. Whatever. 

“That’s the extent of it right now, yes.” Phil shuffled around to lean his cheek against Clint’s chest, to hear the steady thumping of his heart. It’d been one of his favorite things, that sound, for more than a decade. 

“So here’s step number one.” Clint straightened his back and pushed Phil away so they could see each other, face to face, no hiding. “After we finish up here, you’re gonna come back with me to New York.”

“Clint, I have work to do.” And damn it hurt to say that. Phil wanted nothing more than to hop a commercial flight to New York, move into a shitty loft in Bed-Stuy, and stay forever. 

“Just for a short visit.” Clint’s lips curled slyly. “Come see Lucky.”

“It’s not good to neglect a dog…” Phil scowled to keep from laughing. “And I should probably touch base with Maria Hill. And that did _not_ come out the way I’d meant it.” 

Clint tipped over to the mattress and made grabby hands up at Phil, and, well, who was Phil to resist _that_? He leaned down and sucked Clint’s bottom lip between his own, pressing gently with his teeth. Clint whined, and Phil let out an answering growl that had Clint wriggling happily and returning the nip with his own application of teeth. 

“So you’re gonna come home with me,” Clint said as he pulled away. “Catch up with our dog, give us some time alone. And then, when you’re ready to go back, I’ll come back to spend a couple weeks’ vacation with you at your secret base. Be there to rub your neck when the job starts weighing on you. Work out _all_ the tension.”

“And if I… what if I keep on carving things into the walls?” Phil couldn’t get the words above a hoarse whisper. “What if I…?” 

“Then I’ll be there, Phil.” Clint sat up and kissed him, slow and thorough, before continuing. “I’ll keep watch over you, babe. Won’t let you hurt anyone, and I damn sure won’t let anyone hurt you.”

“And…” Phil looked down at his hands. “And if I go…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. _insane_.

“I’ll stop you.” Clint cupped Phil’s face again, resting their noses together. “I will stop you, and I will keep you from being… that.”

“Will you protect my team?” Phil closed his eyes.

“With my life, babe.” Clint kissed him again. “I swear it.”

____

Clint caught Phil as he tipped forward, gathering in the (naked, perfect, fuzzy, freckled) mass of him and holding him close. Phil’s tears had stopped, but Clint wasn’t sure that meant that things were okay yet. And now, feeling tiny shivers run through Phil’s shoulders, Clint started wondering what _else_ could be wrong.

“Babe?” He ran his fingers over the exposed smoothness of Phil’s scalp, just in front of that hairline that drew Clint’s lips like a goddamned electromagnet pulled in metal shavings. “What’s going on in that head of yours now?”

“Too much,” said Phil, slightly muffled where he was squashed against Clint’s right pectoral. “Still too much.”

“So you, uh, wanna stop that for awhile?” Clint tried to delicately rub his nudity against Phil’s, but, pressed together as they were, all he did was bounce them both against the mattress. As sexy gestures went, it didn’t go anywhere. But Phil did snuffle a laugh and push himself up.

“Yes.” He ran the backs of his fingers down the side of Clint’s face, and Clint leaned into the touch, wishing he could purr. He _did_ manage a rumble of pleasure that widened Phil’s pupils and darkened his irises. “What I want-- very much want-- is for you to pin me down and fuck me until I am _not_ thinking anymore, until I _can’t_ think. Until I can’t fucking _walk_ tomorrow. I want you to come so deeply in me I can _taste_ it.”

Clint’s mouth had dropped open at some point, likely to get air, since he was damned certain the climate control had just gone out in the office. He tried to answer, but the best he managed was a whimpery “Wassamblipinen?” 

“That better mean ‘yes,’ Clint, because I need it.” Phil’s voice dropped into another register, and that was just un-fucking-fair; Phil _knew_ what that voice did to him. “I need you to spread me out, open me up, and fuck me stupid.”

“Uh-huh.” It was breathless, barely more than a squeak, but it was at least comprehensible. “Yussssss.” Clint pulled himself free and picked his way across the minefield of Phil’s broken-hearted letters to the hidden drawer, reaching in to draw out the lube and the box of condoms.

“No, Clint.” 

His head whipped around at Phil’s soft voice. 

“Just the slick.” Phil’s eyes were wide and vulnerable. “I don’t want… I think it’s time we… Just you.”

Clint would never remember dropping the box _or_ making his way back to the bed. But the kiss that followed was one he doubted he’d ever forget. Phil arching and groaning under him, both of them trying to get as much skin in contact as they could, fingers digging into flesh too hard, biting at lips, jaws, necks, shoulders. 

Finally, Phil threw his head back with a gasp.

“Come on, Clint.” He was raspy, panting, hips rocking up against Clint mindlessly. “Fuck me, babe. Please, just…”

And how could Clint deny this man anything? Especially something he was so desperate to give? Particularly when Phil was asking for something that was entirely his own, anyway: Clint was his, body, mind, and heart. And he was beginning to suspect he always had been.

____

Clint’s fingers stroking over, around, and inside Phil’s body was familiar. So familiar. So _perfect_. Phil writhed under him, eyes pinned open wide to not miss a moment, still somehow not trusting that this, having Clint here, having Clint _his_ , wouldn’t burn away like so much fog under the morning sun. After a decade as lovers, Phil didn’t need to offer a word of direction for Clint to hit every sensitive place along his ribs, his hips, his thighs. Clint already knew just how much force to use when pressing inside, just the angle to stroke to send Phil into shouted explicatives. And Phil didn’t need to be told that keeping up a steady stream of praise and adoration would soon have Clint beginning to shake and fall apart above him, before they ever got to penetration.

“Can’t believe you’re here, Clint.” Phil reached up to touch Clint’s lips, his cheeks, his chest. “‘Ve missed you over me, around me, in me. Missed your touch. Missed looking at you.” He hissed and arched under a particularly good thrust from Clint’s hand. “God, you’re so fucking beautiful. Most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. Perfect. So incredibly perfect to me. For me. With me…” He trailed off into gasps and sighs then.

Clint’s mouth against his neck, their bodies sliding together brought back a sense memory of the first time they’d done this, the first time _Phil_ had done this, had bottomed for Clint. The sting and the burn, the overwhelming _everything_ of it washed back like Phil was still wet and cold and spread on that bed, hoping that _this time_ after-mission sex would fix everything. That the beautiful, mouthy, kind, infuriating, perfect man that had captured Phil’s attention would be able to shut off the world.

And the kicker was this: that was exactly what had happened.

Somewhere between Clint refusing to let it hurt (refusing to let Phil hurt), and Clint making Phil feel so good, so much better than Phil had known he _could_ feel, the world had fallen away. There was nothing left but Clint above him, inside him, around him, nothing but the way they moved together. Nothing but the way--

“You ready for me, babe?” Clint’s voice was shot to hell, just gravel and sand. “Please, babe, I can’t wait much…”

“Yeah, love.” Phil wrapped his legs around Clint’s hips and pulled him forward. “Been ready for you forever.”

Clint sobbed as he slid home, nails biting deeply into Phil’s side as he did, collapsing forward to curl against Phil’s chest. Phil squeezed tighter with his legs, locking his arms around Clint’s shoulders and kissing every piece of Clint’s face that he could reach.

“I love you I love you I love you,” Clint panted the words against Phil’s throat. “Fuck I love you so goddamned much. And Jesus, I’m not going last. Holy fuck, you feel good. Feel so good. Jesus fuck, Phil. Too much. It’s too goddamned much…”

“Clint!” Phil grabbed Clint’s face and pushed him up, whining frantically as he felt Clint shift inside him. “Babe. Clint. Stop it. Breathe.” Clint took a steadying breath and closed his eyes. “We’re here, and we’re okay. And I love you.”

The answering smile from Clint was blinding. “I love you, too, babe. Gonna make this so good for you.”

And Phil let himself fall and fly as Clint proceeded to do just that.

____

 

“Melinda,” Barton said, and Melinda stiffened in the middle of her kata, one hand frozen in a warding gesture, the other arched above her head. 

She hadn’t heard him come down the stairs, god _damn_ it. This was her Bus, her territory, and no matter how damn sneaky Agent Clint Barton had become after years of training with Romanov, she still should have heard him.

For a long moment, she considered ignoring him, continuing to work, letting the stretch and flow of her muscles through the familiar forms ground her against the whirlwind that he inevitably presented.

But she’d already gone through the whole thing once this morning, working off the residual stiffness from a day of action and a night of drinking and dancing and worrying.

So. 

“Barton,” she greeted him, and turned to find him holding out her towel with his right hand. He was draped over the spiral staircase’s rail, and he looked rumpled as a lion cub after washing. He was also, as near as she could tell, wearing a spare t-shirt of Phil… of Coulson’s, and definitely a pair of his sleep pants, and wasn’t that just sunshine and kittens?

He noticed her noticing, and the look on his face was about two parts insufferable, one part hand-in-the-cookie-jar, and a dash of something like sympathy. 

“You caffeinated yet?” he asked, as if they hadn’t just had a very uncomfortable moment’s stare, and slipped by her, headed for the galley. Melinda didn’t say anything, waiting to see if he’d fill the silence on his own. “I’m hoping you either have or are going to, because I need some badly. Should take some up to Phil, too, since I prefer staying alive, and bringing back coffee breath without the coffee seems like a bad way to accomplish that.”

Sure enough, there he went. That had _always_ been his way. In the _very_ early days, it had made her want to stuff a sock in his mouth. Once she’d realized that it wasn’t random at all, and in fact tended to be worse when he was nervous, or when he wanted to make other people nervous, it amused her more. She enjoyed watching him turn it on unsuspecting agents.

“You know how to make coffee, Barton,” she said, following him slowly, and he shrugged.

“Yeah, but I gotta find it first, and that’s hard to do before you’ve actually _had_ coffee.” He’d reached the galley now, and started rummaging. Melinda waited until his head was buried in a low cupboard, then reached above his shoulder and pulled the coffee bin forward. Barton laughed as he straightened, not at all abashed. “Thanks. The galley’s not part of the Bus I’m familiar with.”

“Not part of last night’s tour?” she asked as he tamped grounds into the portafilter, and immediately wanted to slap herself. _You do not want to give him an opening to talk about whatever happened up there last night, not for anything this world can give you._ Coulson had flat-out insisted on a commercial-grade espresso machine as part of the Bus’s galley, and while she rolled her eyes to his face, privately, Melinda had been both amused and glad. She’d seen him-- and this man in front of her-- drink sludge boiled over an oil drum fire and be happy. When he was given his druthers, however, Coulson preferred nice things, like cafe-quality espresso on a jet. Just how Barton fit into that, in the grand scheme of his life, had always been a little bit of a mystery to her. One she never asked about, and he never talked about. Their friendship was built in part on knowing where each other’s limits were, and she appreciated that he didn’t _press_. 

Now, watching how dexterous Clint Barton was with an espresso machine for someone that she _knew_ preferred his coffee fast, hot, and copious, she felt maybe it was a mistake not to have asked.

“Not part of any of the tours so far,” Barton said, levering the filter into the brew group and tugging it tight. 

Melinda froze.

“You’ve been here before,” she said, and then waited as he finished his work, slapped the red “on” switch with a flourish, and turned around to face her. 

_Yes_ , his eyebrows said, as matter of fact as anything, and sometimes Melinda hated that she could read eyebrows like that. 

Barton gave her the time she needed for that one, and she hated having to be grateful for it. At least she knew her face was shuttered as the various thoughts raced through her mind: _how often? when? how the hell did he get past the sensors-- no, Phil brought him, probably-- how the hell did Phil get him past_ my _monitors? Dumb luck? Were they… what were they? No, you_ know _what they were doing._

And how could she have forgotten? The better part of Clint Barton’s babbling was just that, but every so often he’d slip in a barb. She felt the hook settle under her skin.

At last, he seemed to be done waiting for that to sink in, because he shifted and came to lean next to her. 

They’d worked well together as a team, back when he’d just come into SHIELD, the chip on his shoulder nearly brick size, when she’d been what she’d now consider to be a young asshole with the world at her feet, when Phil Coulson had been… Phil Coulson, only stiffer. _Hell, were we all such jerks when we were young?_

“I did wonder if you’d figured it out,” he said quietly. “Was half sure you had. Melinda--”

“Can we go back to ‘May’?” she asked him, and he shrugged again.

“If you want. I know you preferred that on mission but, well, as a friend. And-- ‘s not a mission anymore.” He was serious, and for half a blessed moment she thought she’d succeeded in shutting him down. Then the babbling picked up again. “And even if it was, I’m not SHIELD now, so I don’t know that I really care. I mean if you don’t. You _do_ , so I won’t do it. I--”

“You’re not coming back to SHIELD?” There, that was a lot better than talking about any _other_ nonsense he’d just started spouting. 

“Nope. Not right now, anyway.”

“Then why are you here?” _Besides to do whatever you two did last night._

“Phil asked me to be here,” he said, meeting her eyes again, and she could feel the tug as he started to reel her in. “No better reason. Especially not given…” he ducked his head. “He looked like crap, Mel-- May. I mean, hot as hell, don’t get me wrong, and that kevlar and rolled sleeves thing is just killer. But. Still. Like crap. And I know _part_ of that is my fault, but even I’m not enough to account for all the circles under his eyes.”

“We’ve been a bit busy, with SHIELD falling,” she snapped. Behind them, the coffee machine gurgled horribly, rattled, and gave up the ghost with a soft sigh-- the sound that meant it had finished brewing. Barton ignored it, so she did too.

“You have,” he agreed. “And with digging up graves.” She’d been called an Ice Queen more than once in her life-- which was a mixed blessing-- but having actual ice in her veins was _not_ what that was supposed to mean. 

“What do you--”

“Everything, now, I think,” Barton told her, and he was still looking at her with that intent, but not unkind, look on his face. Which shouldn’t have been there-- he should have been mad or horrified or _anything_ else. “TAHITI, the GH-325, you watching him for Fury.”

“If he told you all that--”

“You weren’t the only one watching him.” Barton said, still holding her gaze.

“You were--”

“Oh, yes. Most notably, a bug in that little model plane of his. You remember when he found it.”

Wichita. That… _that_ had been… _Barton_ had been the Wichita informant. Melinda’d known that Clint Barton would come crashing through a window or crawling through a vent or falling off a roof back into their lives-- Phil Coulson’s life-- someday. It was as regular as the rainy season. Over the years she’d known them, up close when she was in the field, and slightly further away after Bahrain, she’d known they danced. She’d seen the messy, unprofessional, flat-out spectacular results firsthand. 

She’d let herself grow complacent, when months had passed with no Barton sighting. Perhaps he really didn’t know. That… well, it was Fury’s business and Phil’s that he didn’t. That he was categorized as “Avenger” not “Level 7” for this purpose. Not her worry. Clearly, she’d been blind. 

“Fury? Did he ask you to--”

“Damn Fury, I didn’t do jack shit for him.” _There_ was the anger, echoing Coulson’s own. She braced herself for it; she’d endured that once before from Phil himself and she could certainly take it from Clint Goddamn Barton, who shouldn’t even have been here. But after a moment, Barton shook his head and went to get the coffee. 

He handed her one, turned the other into an americano, and then started another set of shots. As they brewed, he bent over the counter with his mug cupped between his palms. It gave him a fine view of the wall as he continued.

“Fury did what he had to, like always. No, he didn’t ask me, and I wouldn’t have said yes. Phil’ll tell you I did it for _him_ , but Phil’s too soft on me sometimes. I did it for me. And maybe Nat, a little bit, but really-- because I couldn’t stand not to know.”

“He didn’t get angry at you,” she concluded, and Barton snorted.

“He was _livid_ with me, eventually, May. In Lima.”

Lima. He’d been in Lima too, had he? Triplett was evidently more right than he knew-- Barton _did_ just walk in and out of their missions as he pleased. At least though… at least she hadn’t been _alone_ in being frozen out. 

“And then he forgave you.” _How?_ she did not ask, could not ask. Phil said he’d forgiven her-- well, not in so many words, maybe, but he acted like he had. They were teammates again, and she could nearly pretend that all the old camaraderie was back. Hell, there were moments, dressing-up-like-the-Science-Twins-moments, when it felt like before Bahrain. 

There was a wall there, though. There’d been a wall, since he brought her onto the Bus. She’d thought she was chipping through it sometimes, thought it was part of his recovery, then thought maybe it was something else, some madness, when it all went south on her. She’d known when she accepted the assignment that the demolition of their previous relationship had been a risk, but she’d been willing to take that risk. She hadn’t realized how bad it would actually get. But he’d forgiven Barton. Because of the… sex? _You’re an adult, you can say it._

“He loves me,” Barton told her. “So there’s that.” _Ah. Well, then._ “But I don’t suppose it would have gone the same way if I’d been reporting to Fury. Or if I’d been here every day, instead of watching remotely.” 

Clear as day she could read it in his eyebrows, that he thought the wall was on her, not Phil. Hell of it was, if anyone knew, he probably did. But Barton didn’t give her a chance to digest that. He set down his coffee and turned towards her. 

“But that’s _his_ business with you. _I_ need your help.”

Melinda looked down at her coffee, and drank off half in what she hoped was an elegant swallow. It scalded her tongue and throat as it went down, prickled her eyes, but just at the moment she needed that.

“You need what? You want me to watch him for _you_?” Best to take the offensive, see if she could wound him back, because this was getting very one-sided.

“God, no, that’d be a fuckin’ disaster waiting to happen. No. Tell me, Fury still have you watching him?”

“No,” she said. Well. Not… really. _Watch his back for me_ Fury’d said, and she would. She would have without being asked. She had no way of reporting left, no one to report _to_ left. Just the ashes of her actions.

“Good. No. You’re friends, and you’re the closest thing he has here to an equal. I want you to watch Phil for _Phil._ ”

“You want me to report to Coulson when I think Coulson is acting weird,” Melinda said, hoping for a little clarity, here, a sense of which way things should go.

“Fuck no, though, well, you’ll do that too if you think you need to. And good luck to you. No, I… look. He’s Director now, right? Only Phil always did best in the field, you and I both _know_ that. We’ve seen him-- he’s happiest when things are going to hell around him, and he can go do impossible things. But a lot of this is gonna be the bits he hates. Not strategy or logistics really, but management. Boring suit-wearing negotiating being the boss crap. He gets too far into that, and he doesn’t realize he’s growing a stick up his ass. You’ve seen it. Someone needs to watch for it.”

She wasn’t entirely sure she had, unless Barton was referring way back to the time before Nairobi-- it would have been very difficult not to notice that Coulson before Nairobi was very different from Phil after it. In how he treated Barton, yes, but he seemed more at ease in his own suit after that, too. _That_ far back? Basically her entire friendship with Phil, had Barton been quietly poking at his ego in the background, loosening him up?

Of course. No wonder she’d never really noticed.

“I’ve seen it. You don’t want that job yourself?”

Barton shrugged again-- the man was a shrugging machine, more, even, than Skye. 

“My job description just changed. I’ll watch Phil for Phil, yeah, best I can, ‘cause while you’re stuck with me for a bit, god knows I won’t be here as often as I’d like. Not even most of the time. But I’ll let him know if he’s being, well, ‘weird,’ like you said. No, someone needs to watch Director Coulson for Director Coulson, on behalf of SHIELD. Report back to him. I figure you’ve already been doing that.” 

That… made a kind of sense. In a very Clint Barton way. Now that she was being forcibly reminded just what he _saw_ when he tried. Had it been so long since she’d worked with him, not just seen him in a cafeteria or corridor somewhere, or caught up at parties? _Of course it has, you were stuck in your little cube, remember, Melinda?_

“What makes you think he’ll let me?” The Phil Coulson of the past had not been good at unbending once bent. That had terrified Melinda more than anything else, when he found out, when he was so blazingly angry at her. So irrational about her concerns, about Fury’s. So erratic in so many decisions-- and so unforgivably right about the major ones, in the end. 

Digging up his literal grave had been only partly to answer his desperate pleas to _know_. It had also been her last-ditch (hah, he’d love that) attempt to make him see she was _right_ to be worried about his judgement, because if he didn’t believe that he’d never allow her back into his grace. It had left them in this weird no-man’s land where everything had frayed away back to the old baseline partnership, and she’d wondered if there would ever be confidence between the two of them again.

But Clint Barton smiled down at his coffee, and laughed. He was worn, she could see that now that she was just looking at him, not waiting for an axe to fall. Worn and battered and paler than normal, a little sallow maybe. But he had a confidence she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen on him before. 

“Well, he’s changed,” Barton said, and looked back up at her, eyes annoyingly kind, before going to get the new shots of espresso. He grabbed a mug for Phil and disappeared back toward the stairway, leaving her with lukewarm liquid in her cup and a very unsettled mind.

\-----

Phil re-woke to the two best things in the world: the smell of fresh coffee and a Clint Barton wearing Phil’s pajamas. Really, in that moment, he wasn’t sure which one was _more_ welcome. Until a steaming mug was pressed into his hands and Clint crawled onto the bed and wrapped his arms around Phil’s waist, nose pressing into Phil’s neck. Both. Both was best, obviously. 

“Better drink that up fast, babe.” Clint nibbled the soft spot on the side of Phil’s neck, and he cocked his head to give those teeth better access. “Team’s waking up, so we’re gonna have to shower and get back down there.”

“Who’d you see?” Phil sipped at the mug, smiling at the perfection of both the brew and the man who made it. “Give anyone a heart attack?”

“Nah, just May up so far.” Clint nosed in under Phil’s ear, and he considered putting down the coffee and retaliating. But it _was_ really good coffee. “She didn’t seem all that surprised to see me. Think we’ve been rumbled, boss.”

“In light of new discoveries,” Phil paused to sip again, “I suspect we haven’t been as discreet as we have long thought we were.” He shrugged. “Oh well, less to explain as we go.”

Clint rumbled a contented sort of chuckle and kept working his way through a tour of Phil’s Neck and Shoulder Hot Spots while Phil worked his way through his coffee. When he hit the last sip, Clint pulled his mouth away from where he’d been sucking a rather high school-impressive hickey onto the point of Phil’s shoulder and grinned.

“ _Now_ can we go have that shower sex you kept teasing me with?” He leaned back to arrange his muscular limbs in a seductive sort of pose, and Phil couldn’t help reaching out to stroke the back of his knuckles down those amazing abs.

“Clint,” he said mock-seriously, “I think that we can have sex anywhere you want.” Clint opened his mouth to reply and Phil cut him off quickly. “Short of actually _in front of_ my team.”

He rolled off the bed, and Clint laughed all the way around the corner to the tiny bathroom. Phil wasted a bit of breath trying to shut him up during the vulnerable moment they were outside the office door, visible to anyone passing below the spiral staircase, but there was no one to look up: a very _good_ thing as Phil was both very naked and very covered in dried flakes of evidence from their second go the night before.

Phil bustled them into the tiny room, hurriedly stripped Clint out of the pajamas, and shooed him into the microshower.

“You know,” Clint said, pressing himself against Phil, chest to chest, under the steady flow of hot water a few minutes later, “as much as I loved the Clint Cam conversations I really _have_ missed the Phil Pheed phrom in here. Maybe we can get you a new camera, something two way and waterproof. I’ll have to check with Tony.”

Phil collected a mesh scrubber and poured on a generous dollop of gel, working up a thick lather that he rubbed over the back of Clint’s shoulders. 

“We’re clearly going to have to come up with something, since Skye has the Clint Cam.” He worked the bubbles down Clint’s lower back, letting his fingertips chase the bubbles lower, making Clint writhe against him for a moment.

“I could get it back from her,” Clint offered when he managed to take a full breath. 

“No.” Phil shook his head and slid his hands around to work the soap across Clint’s chest. “I think I want her to have that, have a connection with you outside of me. I know I want you to have a connection with her, just in case… Just in case of anything.”

“Then I’ll have a little talk with To--.” Clint broke off with a rumble that sounded like a purr when Phil stroked the sponge across the front of his hips and then lower. “Won’t tell him… won’t tell him who it’s for…” His eyes were closed and he was panting by the time Phil dropped the scrubber and started using his hands. “Just that I need one that… Oh fuck, I didn’t think I’d get it up again for at least another… Oh fuck! You’re good at that.”

“Sorry I can’t get to my knees in here for you, babe.” Phil slid his hands around Clint’s slick skin to grab a couple handfuls of that delectable ass. “Remember the shower at your place? The way you--”

“Like I’m forgetting that one any time soon.” Clint dropped his head to Phil’s shoulder, his own hands roving across Phil’s back. “Can’t wait to get you in there again. Maybe make you wear the plug next time.”

“Well, we’ll be there before long.” Phil mouthed along the ridge of Clint’s shoulder muscle. “And I could probably be persuaded. With the right… incentive.” He bit down hard, and Clint shouted and threw his head back.

“Gonna be awesome to have you home with me.” Clint twisted his head to look at the mark Phil had raised with his teeth, grinning, bright and pleased. “Just you, me, our dog… probably Katie-Kate will come by. You can meet the people in my building. They’re.. they’re awesome, sometimes. Pains in the ass other times. Oh, and Basil will probably be around.”

“Who the hell is Basil?” Phil eased backward a little, opening some space between them.

Clint sighed, deflating and, er, _deflating_ slightly, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. 

“So after… after Lima, I kinda lost it a bit.” He looked down and carefully, clearly keeping a mind to the slick footing, shuffled a bit. “Sort of let my responsibilities go.” His head snapped up, and he had both of his hands locked onto the sides of Phil’s face before Phil could have thought of reacting. “Not your fault. What I did, that was on me. Drank a bit, didn’t eat much, kinda let myself get gross and stupid.”

Phil reached out to catch Clint’s sides, thumbs tracing circles into the creases of his hips. Clint pressed into the touch slightly.

“Anyway, thing is, the tracksuits were looking to buy back the building, and Basil was sent with the offer.” Clint sighed. “I got my shit together, sold the building to Kate to keep it safe from HYDRA, screwed over a Russian mob boss, took Ronin in to make a lot of noise, and somehow ended up with Kate deciding to keep him as a doorman, bodyguard, angry walrus. Something.”

“I… part of me wants to make you fill in the blanks in that story, Clint.” Phil kept his tone and face serious. “But most of me just wants to point to the letters you read last night and remind you that I have no room to scold.” The smile he was trying to swallow slipped through.

“Good,” Clint said. “That’s good. So… full amnesty on all gross stupidity committed while we were apart and pathetic.” He grinned, eyes darkening. “So you gonna fuck me now or what?”

“Are you done talking about poor decision making, people we know, and-- most especially-- Tony Stark?”

“Yes, yes, and never heard of the man.” Clint’s smile turned predatory. “Don’t know how long it’s been since you went bareback, but I gotta tell you, boss, you’re gonna feel so goddamn good.”

“Shit!” Phil slapped his own forehead. “I forgot the fucking lube.”

“Better hurry before the hot water runs out then, babe.” Clint turned himself into the corner, bracing his shoulders on the wall and sticking his ass out. “I’ll be here when you get back. Unless I get tired of waiting.”

Phil stepped out and grabbed a towel to throw around his hips. Before he left the room, he paused with the door shut to say, “Good thing it’s a continuous hot water system. We’ll _see_ how long you can wait.”

Clint was still laughing when he got back, at most, a minute later.

____

The first press of Phil’s fingers turned loose the same barrage of relief as those times Clint found his way home after those missions where everything went to hell and he ended up lost and off the grid. Phil’s breath against his shoulder was heaven, and his teeth worrying the muscles of Clint’s back were anchors in a storm. They were both grateful for the soundproofing of the tiny room as they groaned and whined and shouted their way through foreplay, Phil’s free hand roving across Clint’s skin, and his hips rocking hard against the back of Clint’s hip.

“Turn around, babe.” Phil slipped his hand free and pulled at Clint’s side. “Turn around. Need to pick you up. Wanna watch your face.”

The size of the shower made it surprisingly easy to brace them both as Phil caught Clint under his ass and heaved, and the water made everything slick and tactile as he lined up and slammed himself home. Clint threw his arms wide for better traction and _howled_ his approval. He panted himself back to speech while Phil started a slow, easy rhythm.

“So _this_ is how the Director of SHIELD fucks, is it?” Clint locked one leg around Phil’s hips and managed to wedge his knee enough to give him a bit of power to work with Phil’s thrusts. “Since you’re the boss now, does that mean that everything you do represents SHIELD?”

Phil chuckled darkly and shifted his angle to make Clint hiss and writhe. 

“When you have a cold, does SHIELD sneeze?” Clint forced his mouth to keep working. “When you piss, does SHIELD shake?”

“When you’re being fucked by SHIELD,” Coulson leaned back to get one arm against the wall behind him, “you’re going to know it.” He shifted and let the shower knob bump into Clint’s ass.

“Gotta say, _sir_ , feels big enough to have the Bus up my--” Phil shifted again and Clint lost the rest of his sentence in the shock of pleasure that burned up his spine. “HNNNNNNRGHRGH!”

“So if this is SHIELD fucking you, Barton,” Phil kept up his bored tone, but Clint could see that his irises had nearly vanished into the black of his pupils. “If this is SHIELD, you’re going to say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir,’ and you’re going to do exactly what you’re told to do.”

“And what…” Clint panted and tried again. “What you gon’ tell me to do, _Director_?”

“I’ll tell you when the time comes, Barton.” Phil shuffled his feet slightly, giving himself more leverage with which to slam home. “I’ll make sure that the time is _just right_.”

They lost the thread of their banter then, and Clint just hung on and took it, enjoying the stretch and the slide and the _force_ Phil could get with those amazing hips of his. And then, when the time was exactly right, Phil found his voice and gave the order.

“Come for me, babe. I need you to… Oh… Oh! Fuck! Love… Clint!”

\----

It was midmorning when they finally came downstairs, drawn by the buzz of voices, the clatter of silverware on dishes, and the strong scents of coffee and apples and cinnamon-- probably from a packet of oatmeal someone had nuked.

Clint thought about going first, just to show, then snorted at himself mentally. _You marked your territory pretty damn well already, and the only guy who counts won’t be forgetting anytime soon._ The Bus was, first and foremost, Phil’s place, and he deserved a chance to be smug. Anyway, if Clint had gone first, he wouldn’t have been able to admire Phil’s rearview below him, all nicely suited and tripping down the stairs with a certain jauntiness that made Clint want to pull him straight back up into bed.

The suit itself had been a matter of minor contention; Clint had tried to get him to leave the jacket and tie off, on the grounds that Clint deserved as much of his forearm and neck as possible, thank you. Phil had smiled quietly, pulled him in for a kiss that told him _far_ better than words just what a bad idea that was for productivity, and then turned away and put on his suit jacket. He wasn’t wearing Clint’s shirt this morning. Clint was; apparently it needed a freshening up. (It was becoming clear, too, that if Phil had his way, Clint’s duffel bag would be completely bare of shirts by the time he left. That did mean that holiday and birthday presents were going to be pretty easy to come by for a while.)

Only now, Clint realized that the shirt thing had derailed him from realizing what _else_ Phil was doing with that suit jacket. Agent Coulson might have eventually unbent a little, and Phil Coulson certainly would, but there was no room in this world for a Director Coulson without his suit jacket.

_At least I know that horrible conversation with Melinda was necessary._

She’d been put in a bad position-- had put herself into a worse one, and wasn’t certain how far she’d been able to dig herself back out at the moment. Hell, he’d been there before, but couldn’t afford to let her stay there. Phil needed a deputy-- and a friend.

Speaking of Melinda May, she had her back to them, and looked over briefly, flickering her eyes over them both, ending with a twist to her lips. Phil’s shoulders straightened a little at that, so Clint guessed that was what passed these days in May-land for approval. He briefly cursed Bahrain, and red-tape land, and her and Fury and the world in general.

Skye’s welcome was just as subdued, although there Clint diagnosed a hangover. She was leaning against the breakfast bar, a bowl of oatmeal half-eaten at one elbow, a mug of coffee on the other, her phone in front of her, and she gave a queasy smile from behind a curtain of hair. 

Jemma Simmons and Sephina Day were seated next to May at the table, and Day was curled up against Jemma. Clint knew neither of them well, but Simmons was exactly the type of weird Phil liked to surround himself with, and Skye liked her, ergo she was cool with him. Day was… Day was kinda soppy, actually. Clearly smart as a whip, but couldn’t she cool it for half a minute with the simper? Both of them straightened when Phil came down the stairs, and straightened further at the sight of Clint, then Day ducked her head and giggled, and Simmons bit her lip and flushed bright red at whatever Day muttered.

_Well that’s just great._

Antoine Triplett wandered in from the galley just as Phil stepped off the stairs, so he saw Clint first and gave him a friendly nod, which Clint returned. Then Triplett greeted Coulson with the most carefully measured casual “sir,” that Clint thought he’d ever heard in his _life_ , and Clint had to bite back a smile.

He’d have bet _anything_ just at that moment, that Coulson had seen part of Trip’s granddad’s collection. _Of course he did. They geeked out at each other, they probably half read each other’s thoughts in the field, and Phil probably scuttled right back into hiding at how much he wants to like the guy._ That realization, and well, everything about last night, drove away _any_ unease Clint might have otherwise felt about having Triplett’s truly exceptional shoulders just wandering around in close proximity to Phil.

_And they’re_ nice _shoulders, too._

As he was thinking this, Triplett was looking between him and Phil. He cast half a glance at Skye, then back to both of them, and then he _grinned,_ slow and lazy, and collapsed on the couch next to Simmons. He handed her a fresh cup of coffee, and she looked back up at him. 

That, really, was the extent of the reaction, and Clint realized he felt nothing but relief. Phil’s shoulders relaxed, and Clint wondered just what he’d been braced for. 

They were allowed peace and quiet for the space of time it took to grab fresh coffee and something to eat, and Clint bellied up to the breakfast bar next to Skye and nudged her with his elbow. She rolled her forehead over onto his shoulder and groaned.

“You didn’t let Trip decide where you guys went last night, did you?” he asked, shifting his oatmeal spoon to his free hand once he realized she wasn’t planning on moving away. She nodded, head rolling warm against his arm. “Rookie mistake. Don’t make it again-- when the man takes a notion to party, he does it in style. He tell you about that time with the capybara?”

Skye shook her head, and across the room, Trip snorted. Phil, who was taking Clint’s distraction as his cue to eat his toast as quickly as humanly possible, looked up at them both.

“I tried to,” Trip said, smiling, “but I think everyone was more interested in the dancing.”

“Was that what you were talking about?” Skye shifted a little and blinked up at him. “I kinda lost track at the floatie. Or maybe the rum. The extra rum. Which was your fault. Then May dragged you back onto the floor, I thought?”

Melinda May just shrugged, but that little smug twist of her lips came back as Phil shot a glance at her. 

“You haven’t--” Phil started, then caught himself. “Well. Some other time, I’d appreciate hearing the story. Since I was the one they brought in to explain things to the zoo. Right _now_ ,” he stood, and wandered over to deposit his dishes in the dishwasher, “we need to get moving for the day.” 

Skye straightened, and shoved her hair back from her eyes. Over on the couch, Day uncurled from Simmon’s side, and Trip sat up straighter and rearranged his face. May just went on being May. Clint bit his lip and decided it would be unfair of him to hop up and sit on the breakfast bar, just to piss Phil off.

He’d have done it to Agent Coulson, and later on he might well do it again. _But I probably unbent him enough last night to last a while. Let the guy have his dignity._

“I’ve talked to the University already,” May started them off, straightening up. “And to Doctor Delgado, from the team. It looks like they’re squared away, at least for now. The Doctor was… reluctant… to have any more contact with us right now, and I told him we understood.” She nodded to Skye, who nodded back and took up the thread.

“I set up some new contact protocols, boss,” she said to Phil, “Since the old ones are kinda trash. Nothing big yet, but they’ll be able to get hold of us if they decide they want in, or if they need us.” Clint wondered if those contact protocols also involved Craigslist, and if so, just what Skye’d used as a code. Futons. She’d always liked futon offers for coded messages. Also boxed sets of VHS tapes. 

“All right,” Phil said, looking around. “I heard from the Madison PD this morning as well,” and that must have been while Clint was downstairs talking with Melinda. _That fucker, here I thought he was sleeping in. Gonna have to watch him more carefully._ “Most of Raina’s troops got away, but someone arranged bail for the few that didn’t. We already suspected that some of them were former supersoldiers in the Centipede project; but I was able to confirm another suspicion this morning. The mercenaries Raina was using were the same ones that Waarzegster was using back in Lima.” He'd confirmed that last night while they were talking, but he recognized when Phil was trying to give him an out.

Even after everything, the memory of Lima could still make Clint wince, and he wasn’t surprised to see both May and Skye flinch as well.

“But can we trust h… Waarzegster’s information, then?” Simmons asked, sitting up straight, and Clint didn’t wait for Skye or Phil. This one was on him, after all.

“You can trust ‘Zeg enough to work with ‘em anyway. When they’re paid off, they stay paid off. Raina’s an old customer. If she wanted a goon squad, of course they’d help. Didn’t tell her anything about you, though, either time. That’s all Dr. Rucker’s doing. If you want ‘Zeg to continue to not tell her about you-- and here’s a hint, that’s what you want-- you want to be a good customer too.”

“And that,” Phil said, his smile a little rueful, “may require some grovelling on our part. For now, Clint, please vouch for Skye with Waarzegster. Between the two of you, maybe we can get off on a better foot this time.” Clint nodded, still more than a little stunned.

_Did he just call me ‘Clint’ in the middle of an official debrief?_ Oh, brave new world, where he was on a first-name basis in briefings. 

“Do we have anything left to do in Madison?” Trip asked, and Phil shook his head.

“If you--” Sephina Day leaned forward now, one hand still tangled around Simmons’, and she smiled nervously around the group. “If you don’t mind, before you go? I talked to Carlos, too, this morning,” she nodded at May, “and I think I need… I’m sorry, Jemma, but I really think I ought to stay here.”

“Oh, Sephie!” Simmons said, but she didn’t actually look that displeased. _How long does the limpet act work, anyway?_

“I know, Jemma, but if I’m _here_ , I can keep the others working on the projects we talked about, the ones that you could use on dear Leo. And! I would be able to convince them that it would be a good thing to keep in touch with… with SHIELD,” she turned to look at them all. “If… you’re still all SHIELD?”

“Yes.” Simmons was the one who answered, before anyone else could even react. “Yes. We are. So are you, Sephie. If you want to be.”

Day gripped her hands and nodded, and Jemma sighed.

Clint very, very deliberately didn’t look at Phil. Or May. Or Triplett. And pretended he didn’t feel Skye stiffen next to him, except to put a hand gently right next to hers, as if it had just happened to come to rest there.

“Tell you what,” he said, when the silence threatened to drag, “You pack, Dr. Day, and Trip and I’ll get you back to the University. We’ll meet you all back here in time to take off, yeah?”

“Sure,” Phil said, and Clint tied not to swoon in relief that Phil, this Phil, still always knew what Clint was going for. That the last thing he needed was a _and how long will you be staying_ or any shit like that, or any more discussion about what _he_ was to SHIELD, not with Sephina Day around. 

“C’mon, then,” Trip said, “I want to pick up some beer for the trip back. The new place is _sorely_ lacking with the good stuff, I tell you.”

\----

 

Phil found her in the cockpit, going through her pre-flight checklist, and leaned over the co-pilot’s chair, looking at her. Melinda was as stone-faced as ever, but he thought he caught, just there along the jaw, a little nervous tension.

“We’re going to make a stop in New York,” he said quietly, “I want to find Maria Hill. You go on back to the Playground without me. Send Trip with the jumpjet after a few days.”

He thought for a few minutes that she wasn’t going to respond at all, as he watched her flip switches, check dials, and mutter into her comm. At last, just as he was going to turn to go, her shoulders slumped.

“Are you going to talk to Stark while you’re there?” It was a reminder of what he’d lost, pieces of himself that she’d mostly missed, frankly, stuck down in her cube in HR. And in that, it was as close to an admission as he thought Melinda was ever likely to get that he _had_ lost so much of his life when he died.

“I… don’t think so,” he said, as honestly as he could. “I’m keeping the option open, depending on what Maria thinks.” He came around to sit next to her, watching planes taxi along the runways in the distance.

“How about what Barton thinks?” she asked, and Phil did turn.

“Him too,” he said.

“Is he staying in New York when you leave?” She was running a finger down her checklist, as if she hadn’t memorized it practically the first time she set foot in the Globemaster.

“Coming back to the Playground with us,” he said. “For a little.” He and Clint hadn’t talked that much about it, but Phil was nothing if not reality-based. The world was too damn unsettled for him to squirrel Clint Barton away from it for long.

“And then?”

“He’ll be around when we need him,” Phil said, and leaned forward, over the instrument panel, to try and catch Melinda’s eye. She glanced at him, and finally turned, slumping further.

“I never knew he was here,” she said, her voice soft. “What else didn’t I know? Phil?” 

_So much. Not nearly enough._ Phil tried not to think about the symbols scratched into the wall in the Playground’s storage room, hidden behind boxes. _Clint promised he’d help._ Clint wouldn’t be around all day, every day.

“Melinda,” he said, instead. “Can we try talking instead of spying this time?”

“That didn’t go so well, last time,” she said, her voice rough, and Phil sat back.

“Yeah, well, last time you tried to take my service weapon. Maybe don’t try that.”

It won him a snort, and she shook her head. Almost enough. It was… _almost_ enough, and he hated to push her. Their detente was fragile enough, still, and they could work together, just as they were, walls and everything.

_But I need more than that, I need to place the burden of my friendship on shoulders that can handle it. Clint can, but Clint… bless the man for not realizing it fully, but he’s a superhero. And my… my partner. He needs help, too._

“Much as I hate to admit it,” he said after a moment, “I think I’m going to have to give up some field work.” And that got a laugh-- well, it got the Melinda May version of it, a distinct twinkle in her eyes and a curve of lips. “Yeah, well, don’t you start, too. We’ll bring in others to help, Melinda, but you’re going to have to take point sometimes-- a lot. You’re the only one I trust to keep new agents in line, keep us running. And keep your Director from going insane. Er.”

He said it lightly enough that it passed over her head-- at least, he thought it did. She was too busy fitting the new shape of her role into her head, and she nodded at last.

“Barton said something like that,” she said after a while, seeming more at home in her own skin. 

“Barton did, did he?” Phil raised an eyebrow. _Saw May downstairs_ his Aunt Fanny. How like Clint, never one to enlist help on his own behalf, but willing to drag the Cavalry herself in on Phil’s. “Well. Fine. Thoughts?”

“I think,” May said, and flipped a switch, “That I see Agent Triplett and Barton coming back. And I think, if we do this, you need to think about finding a new driver for the Bus. Phil. Watching your back is a full-time job.” And she smiled at him. 

Phil straightened to go, and May stopped him mid-step. “About watching backs… Doctor Day?”

“Yes.” Phil leaned back onto the copilot’s seatback again. 

“You did notice that she’s a spy, probably for Doctor Rucker, possibly for Raina, and maybe for HYDRA, yes?”

“I think we should leave her out there, for right now. Perhaps she’ll bring us bigger fish.” Phil smiled as he watched May’s mouth tighten into something resembling a smile. 

It was not a _nice_ smile. 

“I hoped that was what you were going for.”

\----

“So,” Clint said, lying on his back on Phil’s couch and watching the clouds pass, pink-tinged, through the skylight above him, “I got a call from Tony while Trip and I were grabbing beers.”

He had one of said beers in his hand, held loosely between finger and thumb, and Phil watched it roll between the strong digits, trying _not_ to think about other things Clint could be holding that way. The bottled tipped towards him, green and white label facing him, the cow on it appearing to jump for Clint’s thumb. Phil concentrated on it, until he could force down the adrenaline that had spiked with the mention of Stark’s name.

“Oh?” he said, and then, when he had tested the quality of his voice and decided it would come out nonchalant enough, he continued. “What did he want?”

Clint turned his head and grinned, in no way fooled.

“He wanted me to move into the Tower, ‘for real this time.’ Same argument as always. But. I dunno, Phil, I mean, it depends on what Hill says, but I think I better go. He’s got some bug up his butt about the Avengers being needed to clean up all the shit SHIELD used to. Thing is,” Clint sat up, and patted the cushion at his side. 

Phil put down his fears, and came over to sit beside him.

“Thing is, you think he’s right,” he said softly. He wasn’t wrong-- already, Phil could see them dropping priority after priority, and the Fridge escapees were high on the list. _We’re so small, so fragile._

“I think he’ll get himself in trouble if he’s not watched,” Clint said, “and I don’t trust Hill to do it. Someone needs to pop his bubble sometimes, and you won’t be there. And Bruce is gone a lot, and well, Nat could, when Nat comes around again. Yeah, I think I need to.”

“It’s a logical place for you, Clint,” Phil agreed, and reached out to circle Clint’s wrist, and rub a thumb along the underside of it. “You’re an Avenger, it’s past time you got your due.”

“Yeah well,” Clint huffed, and Phil thought he was blushing. “Not giving up the Bed-Stuy pad. I need a place to take you when you’re in town.” And he looked up, “Even if it’s not really stylish. And Phil,” he slid his hand back to capture Phil’s fingers and bring them to his lips. “Not going _yet._ I made a commitment, and I wanna see this Playground of yours. And Skye’ll kill me if I don’t spend some time helping her get the computers up to par. Or Trip’ll kill me if I don’t help him finish the beer. So yeah, I’ll be around a bit.”

“I know,” Phil said, and he did. Grand declarations of love, heavy words like “forever,” aside, they were both, still, what they were-- the kind of people who couldn’t help falling out of towers and dying in an attempt to keep some good in the world. 

He would never have fallen in love with Clint if he weren’t that kind of man. 

“Someday,” he said softly, and it was a promise. “Someday when SHIELD is legitimate again, Clint.”

“We’ll get there,” Clint agreed, smiling over their clasped hands. “Come hell or high water, Phil. We’ve already seen the worst.”

“Don’t! Clint, don’t you dare--” Clint was laughing as Phil pulled away to shake a finger at him, “don’t you dare jinx us like that.”

“I love you,” Clint told him, leaning forward and… nuzzling him on the nose. Phil gave way to the laughter building in him, letting himself be pulled into Clint’s embrace.

“Love you too,” he said.

They were flying the exact wrong way to be heading into the sunset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please join us as we continue to play with the characters we’ve established here in the [Two-Man ‘Verse](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/TwoManVerse)
> 
> Dearest, most wonderful readers,
> 
> Thank you all so much for coming on this journey with us. We have laughed and cried and learned so much with you and from you, and we appreciate each and every comment, each and every kudos, each and every reader. 
> 
> This was originally just such a _cute_ little idea: just three short stories, just one little tale to tell. And it grew into a world that breathed and lived for both of us. And our collaboration grew into a very close friendship, a mutually-beneficial partnership, and tandem-porn-writing. Thanks to this series, we’ve learned to write as a single unit, to push for deadlines, to keep going when the muse was long gone. We’ve learned to put words on the page, polish them into something worth reading, and make them sing. And we’ve also learned when to back off and make everyone take a break, have a cup of tea, a little knitting, and lot of delicious murder mystery tv. 
> 
> And it would it have been worth it for all of that alone.
> 
> But you, darling readers, have made it into absolute magic. You’ve pushed us and challenged us and made us become better than we were. You’ve encouraged us and made us laugh, and you’ve been there cheering us on every step of the way.
> 
> Thank you again, from the bottom of our hearts. We hope you stick around to read the rest of our works as we continue to play in the wonderful world Marvel has provided us, and, possibly, in other fandoms as we expand our horizons. 
> 
> Thank you for everything.
> 
> Love,  
> Kat and Fae

**Author's Note:**

> To all our readers who’ve been with us along the way, and were so patient for this, we love you all so much. You really DO keep us writing. And though you may not know it, there are multiple times when we’ve sent your comments back and forth to one another, squeeing, laughing, and sometimes saying ‘we probably better address that in the next story.’
> 
> You can find us on tumblr here:  
> [Kathar](http://kat-har.tumblr.com)  
> [faeleverte](http://faeleverte.tumblr.com)
> 
> If you haven’t yet, check out the [Two-Man ‘Verse](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/TwoManVerse), stand-alone stories set in the same world. Three are already up, dealing with Clint and Phil’s past. We’ll be posting a few more this fall, handling side issues to the series.


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